MightyOhm

Continued from Surplus Summit Part One: Los Angeles.

After visiting Los Angeles for the weekend, I spent the next couple days in San Diego. I had a chance to visit some old San Diego landmarks as well as one newcomer to the surplus electronics scene.

(more…)

(Photo: Tony KC6QHP testing out his 47GHz amateur radio. Remember this post? All that work paid off, the radio works!)

Last month I cashed in some airline miles and finally got to visit some old friends and spend some time in beautiful Southern California. Some long-time readers of the blog may remember the last time I did something like this in 2009.

While I was there I visited my good friend Tony in Los Angeles, and we went on a tour of surplus electronics and swap meets that we called Surplus Summit 2012.

(more…)

While I was visiting Portland last month, I made a quick stop at SurplusGizmos in Hillsboro.

SurplusGizmos is what an electronics store should be, and it’s the kind of place that I love to visit.  It’s also the kind of electronics store that is completely nonexistant in Austin (oh, my beloved HSC, how I miss you), but I digress…

You can usually tell a good surplus electronics store by the pile of junk outside the door (usually with a sign on it that says “Make Offer.”   I’m not kidding:

Inside SurplusGizmos, you’ll find aisles full of electronic components like resistors, capacitors, connectors, random semiconductors, fans, motors, and miscellaneous surplus stuff.  Paradise!

AVR microcontrollers! Forrest Mims books!

They have cabinets with drawers full of electrolytic capacitors!  Yes!  This is what a real electronics store is like!

This way, resistors by the foot!!  This ain’t no Radio Shack!

Aluminum by the pound!

Interesting pieces of surplus equipment sold for pennies on the dollar!

They have a huge selection of “solder samples”, printed circuit boards that are used to…

Actually, I’m sure what they are for.  I think they are used by the PCB manufacturer to test their process, but can someone comment about what solder samples are for, and why you always get one or two when you order a full panel of PCBs?

Anyway, there were LOTS of them.  Hundreds.  Looking at these panels reminded me of Dave Jones’ PCB Design for Manufacture video.  Lots of examples of v-scoring, tab-routing, fiducials, etc.

I picked up a few to use as coasters/wall art/whatever.

Apparently SurplusGizmos has some deal with Oregon Scientific and gets customer returns of their weather monitoring equipment.   It seemed like if you spent the time to collect all the right parts, you could build a complete indoor/outdoor wireless weather station for a fraction of the new cost.

I wish I could have spent more time there, but my time was limited and my luggage space was small.  Next time!

If you’re ever in the Portland area and want to see what a “real” electronics store is like – check this place out.

I took lots more photos, many of which are available on Flickr.

Oh, and SurplusGizmos is listed on the surplus electronics wiki.  If there’s a good electronics store in your area and it’s not on the wiki, add it!  Help keep these small, independently-owned electronics shops alive!

Over the holidays I had a chance to visit Ali’s Surplus Stuff in Sacramento, CA.

This is my kind of place.  Surplus electronics piled from floor to ceiling.  Lots of oscilloscopes and useful stuff mixed in with bizarre industrial equipment.

Lots of cool rack-mounted equipment here.  Lots of push-buttons too.

Need a random computer-related printed circuit board?

My recommendation for places like this is always to come to the counter with the biggest pile of stuff you can carry and haggle on a single price for everything.  You’ll end up paying a fair price for one or two big items and getting the rest thrown in “for free”.

Here’s what I went home with: HP chart recorder, some IC sockets, webcam stand, random RF module, and some kind of monitor shutoff device from back when ‘green’ was just a color.  This is a remarkably small pile of stuff given what was available, but I knew I would have to pack all this into my checked luggage on the flight home.

This was my first visit to Ali’s, and I came home really impressed.  I can’t think of a better place to find surplus electronics junk in the Sacramento area, especially now that HSC Electronics on Auburn Blvd. is gone.  I also feel that if you are looking for used industrial and test equipment, Ali’s has a better selection than Bay Area shops like Weird Stuff.  I will definitely be visiting Ali’s again the next time I’m Sacramento.

Ali’s Surplus Stuff is listed under Sacramento Area on the resources:surplus page of the MightyOhm Wiki.  Whew!

I’ve been making some changes and additions to the MightyOhm Wiki over the past few days.

To complement the awesome list of surplus electronics shops, I started creating wiki pages for the various projects I have previously documented on the blog.

Last night I added a list of cheap PID controllers to the wiki page for my DIY PID-controlled Soldering Hotplate.  (Backstory: the PID controller on my hotplate quit working this week and I’ve been shopping for a replacement!)

I have also  been adding more information to the PCB resources page, including where to order cheap solder paste stencils and resources for making test fixtures.

More to come…