Parts directly from China

[Art]

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MonkeyMIBs=MIBsSquared

[Furcurequs]

I'm now waiting for another part from China that I ordered through ebay. This time, though, a touch screen digitizer to replace the one I cracked on my 7" Android device.

Here are more details about the (hopeful) repair, if anyone is interested:

http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... 216#162216

[cloud camper]

Got a hunch that due to the US - China trade war ramping up and the spectacular rise in Chinese fentanyl being mailed in thru the postal service, you may not be seeing that digitizer showing up for some time as all inbound packages from China will now be searched.

Good luck tho!

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united- ... yl-sold-it

[Furcurequs]

Hey Cloud Camper,

Maybe so. I would think, though, that the attention a package gets may depend a lot on the actual origin of the shipment. The people doing the inspecting probably have from experience a pretty good idea as to what to expect from certain locations/shippers - like whether the items are mostly electronic or whatever.

Anyway, thanks for wishing me luck. Buying directly from China, of course, isn't without its problems. I've now had two or three packages that never arrived.

My digitizer has supposedly been shipped and has been given a tracking number. It's expected arrival date is supposed to be three weeks from tomorrow. If I don't have it in a month or so, then, I may have to seek another source. I haven't checked with the actual seller of my Android device to see if they had a replacement, for instance. If necessary, I'll do that next. They shipped from a storage facility within the U.S., if I remember correctly, even though they may have been a Chinese company.

Thanks for the heads up.

I'm not sure that I would actually ingest anything I ordered directly from China. ...well... I guess I do eat some tuna that's packaged in China which I buy at the local dollar store. ...lol

Take it easy.

Dwayne

[Furcurequs]

According to the tracking information, my package is now already in a United States Postal Service facility in New York City. So, unless there really is some sort of inspection hold up, I suspect I should have my digitizer by the end of the week.

I ordered the thing late on a Friday and so it wasn't shipped until the first of the following week, so it actually took about a week in getting from China to New York. The given Oct 2 expected arrival date is probably, then, a worst case scenario. It looks like it could, barring inspection delays, arrive here two weeks earlier than that.

[Furcurequs]

Well, I didn't get my package this past week, but the tracking information shows that it arrived at a USPS distribution center that is about 60 miles or so from me this morning. That means I most likely will get my digitizer tomorrow (Monday) afternoon. So, that will be a shipping time of about two weeks.

I guess I got lucky with the inspections.

[Furcurequs]

Got it!

The digitizer came packed in a "Styrofoam" block that had a rather large indentation in the side of it, though, apparently due to some rough handling during shipment. Amazingly, however, the touch screen seems to have survived.

The indentation in the polystyrene appeared to be deep enough that if whatever caused it had hit at a slightly different angle, I suspect it could have cracked this piece of glass, also.

Anyway, I need to get some isopropyl alcohol tomorrow when I do my grocery shopping so that I can clean off the residual glue on my android device and also do some cleaning of the screens before I attempt finishing my repair, but things are looking good.

...until next time...

I'm thinking some rare earth magnets for my magnet experiments, but I may just order them from a U.S. seller. I'm looking at near $30 worth, I believe. They are quite a bit more expensive than ceramic ferrite magnets of the same size. Maybe near ten times the price.

[Furcurequs]

Since we discussed lithium ion batteries in this thread, I thought I would mention this here. I finally found my missing battery - my 18650 unprotected lithium ion cell!

...and in the dryer in the laundromat after it had been both washed and dried with my blue jeans! ...lol

I thought, "OH NO! I've seen videos of these things exploding when they were shorted out! Is that why one of the washing machines was making strange noises?"

Anyway, the end of the cell that has both terminals looked a bit rusted or something, and so I was worried that I had ruined it, but I swapped it, while it was still hot from the dryer, with the one I had in my flashlight and it seemed to be working fine still.

It had been in a little plastic ziplock bag that once held some electronic parts, but the bag had some perforations in it, so I'm sure the cell wasn't kept totally dry throughout the wash and rinse cycles.

Anyway, until the next adventure...

[cloud camper]

Well it looks like your adventures of ordering stuff directly from China are now history.

As another casualty of the US-China trade war the US has now pulled out of the treaty that allowed China to get away with artificially low shipping prices.

Reality has now returned so the next order will be subject to 10X shipping rates! Fun while it lasted!

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politic ... -targeting

[Furcurequs]

Hey Cloud Camper,

I heard about that the other day. I wonder how quickly the changes will happen, then?

I've noticed that there are Chinese sellers now with warehouses in the U.S., so apparently they do enough business that it may pay for them to just ship their stuff here in bulk in advance anyway. Since the reduced rates that are at issue only applied to individual smaller packages sent from China, I suspect many sellers will soon have an adequate workaround - though it may still increase rates a little bit. Many if not most ebay sellers list with "free shipping" these days, so they obviously just lump shipping in with the price.

In other words, my adventures may not be over just yet!! ,,,lol

[Furcurequs]

I've ordered through ebay another product made in China, but this time I chose to make my purchase from a U.S. seller instead of ordering it direct. So, I paid about $10 instead of $7. I decided that for this one I just didn't want to deal with the typically longer wait time or the greater chance of not receiving it at all.

It's a product that I might actually use, too, especially if I ever get back to working on some of my electronic projects and/or my electromagnetic experiments. It's a device which tests and displays the parameters of many different electronic components to include resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, LEDs, bipolar transistors, field effect transistors and maybe even a few more!

The device was apparently designed around an inexpensive microcontroller chip which was programmed and has evolved over time with the help of people contributing mostly through a Russian online forum, if I'm not mistaken. ...and then, of course, the Chinese started manufacturing them for cheap!

Here's the link to a Chinese ebay seller who sells many different variations of the device. Some of the more recent versions have a few more capabilities, but some variations may be mostly just due to different mechanical layouts or whether or not they have cases or additional test probes or whatnot.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/M328-GM328A-M3 ... 2455562659

I ordered the cheapest one there, an earlier version without a case or test probes, and again from a U.S. seller who happens to be in a nearby state.

I suspect that when I finally get around to my electromagnetic experiments, this device's ability to quickly measure inductance will come in quite handy. You would stick the wire leads of the device under test into the ziff socket and then push the button and then know the inductance within 1.7 seconds! That would certainly be much easier and quicker than having to examine waves on the oscilloscope!

[Furcurequs]

The tracking says my package has been delivered!

I guess it's time to make the hike to the mailbox, though I may get a shower first in case my neighbor happens to be out and downwind.

[Furcurequs]

Here's a video showing the version of the component tester that I bought. Mine looks exactly like this one and seems to be working fine. It's really quite impressive what it can do for such a low cost device.

"EEVblog #1020 - Is A $7 LCR / Component Tester Any Good?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Br3L1B80ow

[Furcurequs]

Wow! Here's a Chinese company that sells high quality custom made printed circuit boards for cheap! You can upload a file with your own electronic circuit layout and then get ten 2 layer boards up to 10 cm x 10 cm in size made and ready to ship to you - directly from China - within 24 hours! Oh, and all for only $5!! That's only 50 cents a board!

If interested, check out this video. This isn't some sweatshop, either, but rather a state of the art automated facility. They apparently have such a large clientele that they can handle this type of small quantity prototyping.

They, of course, have many other and more expensive options, too, which can still be made within a few days. They will even source the parts and populate the boards for you, also, if you want to pay some more.

I'm amazed by this. A consumer quality build that even a hobbyist can afford. Oh, and actually, it looks like the first 10 boards are free!

"How PCB is Made in China - PCBWay - Factory Tour" ~13 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GVk_hEMjzs

https://www.pcbway.com/

I had bought some small prototyping boards off of ebay that were just filled with plated-through holes that I haven't used yet, but the place I ordered them from also offered customized circuit boards like this. I'll have to look for their business card and compare them. (I don't think they were the same company, though I could be wrong.) I was really impressed by the quality of the boards.

If they could whip out a wheel build as quickly as a circuit board, some of us procrastinators could have our wheels ready by the end of next week! How would that be for a Christmas present? I don't think they celebrate Christmas themselves, however, though I noticed they are selling circuit boards with Christmas tree designs that can be populated with LEDs.

[Furcurequs]

(snip)

I bought some LED bulbs from Walmart this weekend, so they didn't come directly from China, but they were made in China.

Wow, and I'm impressed with these things, too.

These 14 watt LED bulbs put out 1100 lumens - which is the equivalent light output of a 75 watt incandescent bulb. I think they cost me about $4 a piece for the 4.

I replaced my 26 watt compact fluorescent bulbs in my light fixture with these and I see no difference whatsoever in the light output. So, I'm getting the equivalent of 300 watts of incandescent light for 56 watts now. That's a lot of light for less than 6/10 of a cent per hour.

I can have these LED bulbs on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then, and they will only cost me about $1 a month in electricity per bulb. My cabin is so dark inside even during the day that I pretty much have to have them on all the time anyway. ...but it's neat to know that my lighting needs should now only cost about $4 a month.

I could save 4 cents a day if I turn them off when I sleep. ...but since both the old incandescent bulbs and the compact fluorescent lights are more likely to burn out when being turned on and off and thus actually have a shorter life span when they are cycled, I got used to just leaving my lights on all the time.

These LED bulbs supposedly have a 25,000 hour life. That's about 3 years continuous. They're probably better about cycling on and off than the other bulbs, but I'll probably still just leave them on all the time, too.

(snip)

It's been 20 months since I bought my LED bulbs from Walmart and I've pretty much had them on nonstop ever since, and as of now they aren't doing too well. Three out of the four are now so dim that they are practically night lights. The fourth is, I'm guessing, about half the original brightness. They've just been gradually decreasing in brightness all along.

I bought replacements this weekend from the hardware store Lowe's (I accidentally bought the "daylight" bulbs, though, instead of the warmer lights, but anyway...). I haven't changed them out yet, however. So, the previous bulbs useful life seems to be about 10,000 hours short of the 25,000 claimed.

After I change to the new bulbs, I may try to turn them off more often.