Ali Express Parts

Posted: Wednesday, June 19, 2024 at 12:17 PM | Categories: Internet of Things (IoT), Project Builds

In my previous post, I mentioned that I like building electronic projects I find online. Historically, I purchased a lot of project components from online vendors like Adafruit and Sparkfun. Both offer their own proprietary boards as well as some standard electronics components you can use for your projects (such as battery connectors, cables, breakout boards, other connectors).

It seems to be harder lately to find simple components I need on Adafruit's site while I don't buy that frequently from Sparkfun anymore. I found that a lot of the things I need I can get from Amazon now and I can get them almost immediately (same day, in some cases) and usually shipped for free.

When I built the bench power supply, and some other projects lately, I found that it became much easier to locate a huge variety of electronics components at a very reasonable price with free or very inexpensive shipping on Ali Express. Lately I've been buying switches, connectors, batteries, and more in bulk for pennies on the dollar there against buying them on Amazon or Adafruit.

Case in point: years ago I looked for panel mount USB connectors I could use for my microcontroller projects. My thought was that for many of my projects, I didn't want the microcontroller USB connector bumped up against the side of the enclosure, I wanted to put a USB connector on the back of the enclosure (hidden away) and only use the microcontroller connection when programming the board (deploying a sketch, for example).

I hunted around and finally found some on one of those large component vendor web sites (I don't remember which one, I think perhaps DigiKey or Mouser) but they were $14US each and, with shipping, much too expensive for me to stock up on.

Fast forward a couple of years and I specifically went looking for USB connectors on Ali Express and found so many different options at incredible prices. Take a look at the two bags below, each contains 50 panel mount USB connectors with pigtails in two different styles and I was able to purchase the whole lot, with shipping, for about $20US.

It's just amazing. I've even started looking there for larger electronics too like LASER engravers, Reflow Ovens, hot air rework stations, etc.

Another interesting about buying from Chinese vendors is that they've started using shipping companies in the US for in-country delivery. For a lot of purchases lately, the packages go to a US company who repackages it (or at least relabels it) for US shipping, using USPS for the last mile(s). Folks like Olight (excellent flashlights), Seeed Studio (yes, three e's, not a typo) and others seem to do this as well and it seems to work pretty efficiently.

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Header image: Photo by Robin Glauser on Unsplash.