Reasonably priced PICs?

[Macka]

Ok, as I mentioned in my post in the introduce yourself topic, I am currently studying for my exams, but after exams are over I am wanting to get hold of a few PICs.

I have 3 PIC 16F88's which I sampled from Microchip about 2.5 years a go, I never got around to using them as my home made programmer couldn't be completed (Australia sucks when it comes to obtaining chips). I now have a PICkit2 which I purchased last week from the uni (cheaper that way).

The 3 chips I currently have are already assigned to projects and I am looking to purchase some more, however they are so expensive in Australia! It's ridiculous!

I have compared prices from dontronics, microchip, jaycar, Microchip with Academic pricing and Digikey.
Jaycar is selling a PIC 16F88 for $14.95 ea
Dontronics is better priced at $7.25 ea
Digikey are selling the same chip for US$4.00ea, which is much much better, but the shipping can't be calculated until I purchase the device.
Microchip sell them for US$2.60 ea but the postage and handling is US$17.71 shipping  + US$5 handling (if the total price is <US$25)
Microchip offers a 25% Academic discount.

Cause there are different rates for different quantities, I have graphed the prices and quantities with MatLAB (MicrochipA is academic prices and is the yellow line, if anyone is interested). Digikey hasn't been included as I don't know about shipping and need to investigate prices further (after exams). All prices are in AU$ using the current exchange rate.

Are there any places I have missed/can get them cheaper? And why the heck do we get such pathetic prices?

[GeekGirl]

Farnell is another place, 1+    $6.50    
10+    $3.74    
25+    $3.61    
100+    $3.43    

[Macka]

I'll have to check them out, what is their shipping like?

Personally I prefer to be able to go to the local store, but it looks like the best prices are online 

[EEVblog]

I'll have to check them out, what is their shipping like?
Personally I prefer to be able to go to the local store, but it looks like the best prices are online 

Farnell shipping is now FREE for all web order regardless of price, and that's same/next day courier shipping!
RS is also free.

Both have trade counters too where you can go get a human to hand it to you

Dave.

[Macka]

Farnell have some good prices, and I'm glad they have free shipping too, as the trade counter is a little far away (me being in Adelaide and everything )

Thanks Dave and Kat!

btw, why is it that Australia has the worst prices, surely shipping doesn't drive the price up that much

[EEVblog]

Farnell have some good prices, and I'm glad they have free shipping too, as the trade counter is a little far away (me being in Adelaide and everything )
btw, why is it that Australia has the worst prices, surely shipping doesn't drive the price up that much

I actually get better prices than those shown on the Farnell website, as I've signed up for their new web pricing program which aims to match Digikey pricing on almost every part. It is not fully implemented yet, they have a bunch of monkeys in Singpore banging away on keys, but they are getting there.
Apparently you don't have to do anything special to get it, just ask your rep and they activate your account, then the cheaper prices show up on the web site.

It's not shipping or dollar conversion which drives up prices in Australia, it's the creation of segmented artificial market pricing, and also protecting the revue of the authorised distributors.

Happens on consumer good too. For instance, Garmin GPS's have one price for the US, and another (higher) price for the "rest of the world". If you are an authorised seller and don't sell at the inflated price they tell you to, you lose your distributorship.

Dave.

[septer012]

Not sure if this is relevant to you down in Aus. but in the states I find www.Newark.com the best and cheapest for buying PIC's.

[septer012]

Well snap, I guess you can just ignore that.  Newark and Farnell are the partners...

Also I just found out Newark bought Cadsoft, the EagleCad company.

[dexters_lab]

i tend to bulk up and buy 10+ devices from microchipdirect.com to reduce the bigger shipping charge.

[Macka]

Yeah, it only becomes worthwhile from microchip if you buy 8 or more (see graph above).

According to a 3rd year student, if I go to the right JayCar (one closest to uni), I can get a larger discount if I show them my uni card; not sure how much larger though.

[joelby]

US companies sometimes only allow international shipping via courier services. Microchip Direct isn't too bad, but it's not worth it if you only want a couple of things. US domestic shipping is usually much cheaper and occasionally free, so you could sign up for one of the many US-based mail forwarding companies. The one I've used charged less than $10 for one item and allows cheap USPS shipping. An example: I recently ordered an FPGA evaluation board from Avnet and their cheapest shipping option was USD100. With a forwarding service, it was about USD 26.

[Simon]

I bulk buy from farnell or RS (and then sell the surplus on ebay to most of the world) I'm not sure what your project is but have you thought of the 12F615 ? its an 8 pin one but its still a 20 MHz core (4/8 MHz internal) its about 1/4 the rpice of a 16F88

[Macka]

I bulk buy from farnell or RS (and then sell the surplus on ebay to most of the world) I'm not sure what your project is but have you thought of the 12F615 ? its an 8 pin one but its still a 20 MHz core (4/8 MHz internal) its about 1/4 the rpice of a 16F88

Seems like a good idea, I considered doing something similar, still might. I'll also keep an eye out on ebay for chips, though I am a little wary.


The original project I got it for was an LED POV display for a bicycle.

Pin count:
8 for LEDs
1 for a hall effect sensor
2 for power
1 or 2 for input buttons
optional 2 pins for an external oscillator

It also needed to be fast (I wanted the option to use a 20MHz crystal if I needed to) and have at least 1 external interrupt (for the sensor).

However, as I mentioned in my first post, I wanted to get hold of a few more so I can have some on hand for any project I might think of.
I was thinking a 16F88 was a fairly good all-rounder and should be suitable for most projects; though someone recommended I look through the MicroChip site and select a range of chips and sample them.

[Simon]

can you get all of that on a 16F88 ? its max 16 ports without reset and external clock etc, look closely at the common pin functions you will find you have less ports than you think. I also use the 16F88, well its what i started on instead of a 16F84 (the old good al ropund chip but out of date) and yes its a good all round chip in my opinion too but at the moment I don't need so many ports and the 12F615 does what I want as fast but with less ports, I'm using a 12F615 for car projects better spend £ 0.7 instead of £ 2.6 for the 16F88 (non bulk price) especially when your playing with nasty car power supplies and keep blowing em up