Various Parts Questions

[napierzaza]

1) Okay, firstly does anyone want me to email them my parts list from Mouser with quotes. I've got all the right parts and decent prices and you don't have to buy 5000 of anything. I was going to post to the Wiki but there's no sign up option, and I don't think it's very easy to update it anyhow.

2) Where does everyone get cheap momentary push-buttons? All I've seen on Mouser are around a dollar. I just want a bunch of cheap PCB mountable push-buttons but they don't seem very apparent.

3) Where is the best place for a 2x40 LCD screen? Mouser again fails at this respect. they have some for 20$ but there's no information on compatibility.

4) Where should I buy vectorboard? Mouser sells 16x 4.5 sheets for 15$ American. This is pretty pricey in my eyes and I think that some basic pad-per-hole or straight matrix board would be cheaper.

[ultra]

check out my third post at this link

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=8408.msg58701#msg58701

i'm new to electronics and i had no problems matching up the lcd connections as well as making a negative voltage converter.

[stryd_one]

1) Would be awesome if you were so kind as to put it on the wiki. You can use your same username and password as these forums, and when you are in there it is easy to edit, there are tutorials, examples, a playground page where you can do whatever you want, and I have a MS Word to dokuwiki converter script if you use office and don't want to learn dokuwiki markup (which is not that hard, it's no harder than this forum).  ;)

2) Hah you reckon $1 is bad, I'm trying to find decent ones under $20 at the moment. The trick is that there's a lot of different types out there and you need to be pretty specific as to what you want.

3) Mail them and ask for a datasheet or at least the controller IC number. They are hard to come by unfortunately (WHY!?!?!?)

4) Hongkongsuperseller on ebay has big ass sheets of it, way bigger than anything else I could find, for cheap. His shipping is expensive (as with all hong kong shipping) but he's a good guy and very reasonable and if you buy a few things (like the cheap pushbuttons he sells too) then the combined shipping is not so bad. Ignore the BS rumours that revolved around his competition, I have personally sent hundreds his way and never had any problems with the gear I received or how I received it. I don't work for him or guarantee anything though, so yaknow, remember it's ebay huh.

Just a thought - if you're buying a LOT of something, like in the hundreds or thousands for cheap items (like switches), or in the dozens for expensive ones (like LCDs), it often pays to visit the manufacturer's website, look up your nearest distributor, contact them directly, under a business name, and request a quote. Just don't be offended if they tell you you're small fry and they don't wanna deal with you, it happens ;)

[napierzaza]

1) Would be awesome if you were so kind as to put it on the wiki. You can use your same username and password as these forums, and when you are in there it is easy to edit, there are tutorials, examples, a playground page where you can do whatever you want, and I have a MS Word to dokuwiki converter script if you use office and don't want to learn dokuwiki markup (which is not that hard, it's no harder than this forum).  ;)

Ahh, okay, so it's linked to the forum passwords! Because there was notwhere to sign up! I'll see what I can do, it's an Excel spreadsheet not a MS word, hopefully it will turn that into a table?

2) Hah you reckon $1 is bad, I'm trying to find decent ones under $20 at the moment. The trick is that there's a lot of different types out there and you need to be pretty specific as to what you want.

Now I see why Thorsten didn't think anyone would want to do a 64 button matrix! I had always thought that the PCB mountable buttons would be dirt cheap.

3) Mail them and ask for a datasheet or at least the controller IC number. They are hard to come by unfortunately (WHY!?!?!?)

Datasheet or standardized LCDs?

4) Hongkongsuperseller on ebay has big ass sheets of it, way bigger than anything else I could find, for cheap. His shipping is expensive (as with all hong kong shipping) but he's a good guy and very reasonable and if you buy a few things (like the cheap pushbuttons he sells too) then the combined shipping is not so bad. Ignore the BS rumours that revolved around his competition, I have personally sent hundreds his way and never had any problems with the gear I received or how I received it. I don't work for him or guarantee anything though, so yaknow, remember it's ebay huh.

Okay, ebay it is!

Just a thought - if you're buying a LOT of something, like in the hundreds or thousands for cheap items (like switches), or in the dozens for expensive ones (like LCDs), it often pays to visit the manufacturer's website, look up your nearest distributor, contact them directly, under a business name, and request a quote. Just don't be offended if they tell you you're small fry and they don't wanna deal with you, it happens ;)