Adding multiple footprints for the same chip might also help. You might prefer a certain package, but if you have the space to put pads for a larger package, or you can fit pads for a smaller package inside the current footprint. If there's a shortage on your favourite package, you might still find the larger/smaller package and do a run with these.
One more tip: if there's enough space on your board, making stamp size modules with castellated holes for components like microcontrollers, can help in adopting a new chip if the currently used one is no more available. This will increase the PCB fabrication cost, but that's better than not being able to manufacture/sell anything.
About that :)). I wanted to buy some devboards for my DSP lab in September, but it took until now for the nice fellas at the financial to approve my purchase. Now there are no dev boards what so ever, and the next shipment will be in April FML. That's what I get for being an STM guy and wanting the newish STM32G491 I guess...
Maybe you should also mention what _not_ to do. Like how buying parts from aliexpress (or ebay/amazon chinese sellers) has a chance of netting you something from the QC-discards bin. I've had bad luck with this twice in the past few months.
I buy a lot of stuff for analog audio work, and I have gotten some truly astoundingly bad parts from aliexpress. I often test bad quality or counterfeit parts in my design stage with the intention of making my designs more robust (and I don't feel bad about abusing and accidentally destroying 5 cent opamps). I found 100 counterfeit lm324 parts that are so noisy , with such high voltage offset, that with two caps and a resistor they form a 5v Pk to Pk tone generator. Also the Texas instruments logo on them looks more like starfish than anything else.
Ditto. I had some 1000 Euro boards made for a work project and after getting a guarantee that all chips had been secured by the contract manufacturer, the boards showed up missing an interface controller for USB3. I had screen-shot the guarantee of part availability so I told the contract manufacturer that they were going to buy and strip dev boards to complete mine at a loss of a couple hundred Euro or they were going to not get paid anything for the boards or parts they had just wasted. I got my complete and working boards back two weeks later, and hope I don't have to be so hard edged in the future.
Been tempted to do this with one project. However it's a 300+ ball BGA package, and I'd have to reball it. Not ever tried to reflow with BGA parts, so further risk.
We order hard to find chips as soon as the design has settled on that part. This is even before the PCB layout is complete. This gets the part in hand, and any missing parts in queue.
If you can afford to buy enough parts to last your expected prototyping + production use for the next year or so, then do it. Preferably before even finalising the schematic.
This has been my life for a better part of a year at work. We've been sourcing from what normally would be off-limits and generally no max price as long as we can move product. I saw a comment about pulling parts from eval boards... I may have a pile in my pocket just in case. Once we pass this it will be SO relieving.
I had some luck with migrating to BGA packages. Now even those are gone. I have a feeling that for some, this shortage state is welcome and they are willing to maintain this state.
it definitely makes life harder for smaller companies, which is of cause not the worst for big ones like samsung etc. However it also hurts some real big manufacturers for that same reason. Mainly car manufacturers as they source their part / modules from smaller companies
In addition, good tip about writing software for microcontrollers, is to make software application part platform independant as much as possible. But only port architecture dependant part.
I really like your content, I thinks it's a lot more complex and fun than other RUclips channels in those subjects. But I might say, you can really make a huge step up if you develop how your voice sound in your videos, in this one for example, your voice comes sounding with a los of hiss, which make it a little bit difficult to understand those awesome things that you talk in your videos. Greetings frol Chile!!
It helps to turn on captions. I'm a native (American) English speaker, but I still usually turn on captions for most technical videos. Sometimes the captions are garbage, but this (Carl Bugeja''s) is a channel where they are usually pretty good.
Great video, I only wish I could email it to myself 15 months ago when I was in the preliminary design phase hahaha. Ended up having to source quite a few components from Win-Source electronics at about 600% mark up 😭
I recently ordered a bunch of (chinese) NodeMCU (ESP) Boards.. And all had fake USB-Serial chips on them that did not work at all. The chips even prevented an external USB-Serial interface to communicate with the ESPs RX and TX lines... I had to physically remove the USB-Serial chip from the NodeMCU board to get communication going. I think thats even worse then getting nothing at all :D
You also have the option to buy in advance the parts you need and have the SMT service store it for you. It's very easy with JLCPCB, but not sure about PCBWAY. Problem is, in most cases you need to buy a full rail of 3000 components. That's not cheap and only makes sense for production. For prototyping is not an option.
It also ties you in because once you've bought those parts the only way you can get them is through assembly orders. You can't say "hi can you just ship me the rest of that reel please?"
3000 10k 0603 resistors isn't expensive at all, 3000 MCUs or other $10 each semiconductor is very pricey. JLCPCB/LCSC (and other distributors) have some quite large mark up on some components, it's not uncommon to find the same parts available elsewhere for half the price.
@@DavidRobertsonUK Well, yes, but you need them assembled anyways, so tying to a particular SMT, especially the one of your choice is not a bad thing. No matter which SMT you use, you still need to ship them the parts. And as I said, if it is for production, JLC is much more convenient, since it saves you at least 3 steps when ordering parts and shipping them. But It is different from case to case and I'm not saying JLC is the best SMT.
2 года назад
I bought all of the parts at the start of the pandemic, not much of it overall, but great prices.
Isn't this how China makes gear so cheap? They make clones of clones for production rates! You often see the same pcb design but with extra footprints to allow for the alternative components. Really starting to understand pcb design now thanks to blokes like you Carl!
We do know what caused it. It early 2020 the people who own eveything thought the real economy would crash because the governments they bought would be incapable of addressing covid, as designed. Because of this they ordered less, reserving less capacity from the chip manufactutrers, who then manufactured fewer chips. Now we're in a position where the people who own everything are having their servants panic buy, as you mentioned. There is a backlog caused by previous speculative restriction of supply that is inelastic upwards.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but the Chipsortage is refering to CPU/SoC/GPU. everything that has a short production run. and needs to be planned far ahead?
No, it's affecting all sorts of semiconductor products including very simple devices. For instance I've had issues getting some TVS diode arrays and some FETs recently, as well as ADCs, microcontrollers, MEMS clock generators, ... ... List goes on
@@DavidRobertsonUK Learned something today, thanx. I guess it might have been sort of butterfly effect. Prioritizing CPU and such, to try to meet the demands, resulting in delays in other components?
@@sundrak1 I'm not exactly sure what's going on behind the scenes but I don't think that explanation makes sense - very different manufacturing processes are used for state-of-the-art CPUs etc compared to bog standard microcontrollers and discrete devices etc. A fab that can produce the latest SoC probably can't easily switch to making simple microcontrollers overnight.
@@DavidRobertsonUK Its speculation on my part ofcourse. Alot of arm SoC's still use the old(er) process. thats why I figured it might be a butterfly kinda thing going on.
Why do you put a virus picture ?!! China is running out of coal for its power plants and can no longer run the factories 100% of the time. But great video, as usual ;)
![Run Away - Tzuyu(TWICE) ツウィ 쯔위 [Music Bank] | KBS WORLD TV 240906](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KnHNNyAYiu0/mqdefault.jpg)
Clearly, your best option is to simply buy a photolithography setup, seal your room from the outside, and create your own computer chips from scratch.
See you in a few years
He’s a Genius
shhh! don't give him ideas
Adding multiple footprints for the same chip might also help. You might prefer a certain package, but if you have the space to put pads for a larger package, or you can fit pads for a smaller package inside the current footprint. If there's a shortage on your favourite package, you might still find the larger/smaller package and do a run with these.
One more tip: if there's enough space on your board, making stamp size modules with castellated holes for components like microcontrollers, can help in adopting a new chip if the currently used one is no more available. This will increase the PCB fabrication cost, but that's better than not being able to manufacture/sell anything.
For many sensors, desoldering it from a breakout board is a easier and cheaper alternative.
About that :)). I wanted to buy some devboards for my DSP lab in September, but it took until now for the nice fellas at the financial to approve my purchase. Now there are no dev boards what so ever, and the next shipment will be in April FML. That's what I get for being an STM guy and wanting the newish STM32G491 I guess...
Maybe you should also mention what _not_ to do. Like how buying parts from aliexpress (or ebay/amazon chinese sellers) has a chance of netting you something from the QC-discards bin. I've had bad luck with this twice in the past few months.
I buy a lot of stuff for analog audio work, and I have gotten some truly astoundingly bad parts from aliexpress. I often test bad quality or counterfeit parts in my design stage with the intention of making my designs more robust (and I don't feel bad about abusing and accidentally destroying 5 cent opamps).
I found 100 counterfeit lm324 parts that are so noisy , with such high voltage offset, that with two caps and a resistor they form a 5v Pk to Pk tone generator. Also the Texas instruments logo on them looks more like starfish than anything else.
I spent more time looking for ICs then I did designing a project.
Search for the same part using esoteric package names, SC-74A is TSSOP for instance.
It's been really frustrating with the shortage; how many times I've found the perfect component for my project, only to find out it's out of stock...
I’ve purchased development boards just to harvest a part!
glad i'm not the only one 😅
Ditto. I had some 1000 Euro boards made for a work project and after getting a guarantee that all chips had been secured by the contract manufacturer, the boards showed up missing an interface controller for USB3. I had screen-shot the guarantee of part availability so I told the contract manufacturer that they were going to buy and strip dev boards to complete mine at a loss of a couple hundred Euro or they were going to not get paid anything for the boards or parts they had just wasted. I got my complete and working boards back two weeks later, and hope I don't have to be so hard edged in the future.
Haha, yep, at work we need prototypes done and some things are just cheaper if you buy a whole dev board
Been tempted to do this with one project. However it's a 300+ ball BGA package, and I'd have to reball it.
Not ever tried to reflow with BGA parts, so further risk.
Haha I join the club. 1500 dev boards ordered and use as donor. Feeling bad about the e-waste, so maybe I sell them later as refurbished
We order hard to find chips as soon as the design has settled on that part. This is even before the PCB layout is complete. This gets the part in hand, and any missing parts in queue.
If you can afford to buy enough parts to last your expected prototyping + production use for the next year or so, then do it. Preferably before even finalising the schematic.
you're right! or at the essentials parts you'll need for prototyping
aka the technique known as chip hoarding. Which can make any existing shortage worse. Though us small makers are too small to make a dent, probably.
@@victortitov1740 true, but at the moment it's the only way to survive
This has been my life for a better part of a year at work. We've been sourcing from what normally would be off-limits and generally no max price as long as we can move product. I saw a comment about pulling parts from eval boards... I may have a pile in my pocket just in case. Once we pass this it will be SO relieving.
We can survive this folks! Hopefully we can still just have a good time making stuff.
i take this situation as an excercise for more creative design :P
As someone's who's finally escaping her country and can finally buy parts for projects. This breaks my heart so much
Good luck and I hope it works out!
I feel you, only recently lcsc has got a reasonavle shipping cost, and many things are out of stockk
I had some luck with migrating to BGA packages. Now even those are gone. I have a feeling that for some, this shortage state is welcome and they are willing to maintain this state.
it definitely makes life harder for smaller companies, which is of cause not the worst for big ones like samsung etc.
However it also hurts some real big manufacturers for that same reason. Mainly car manufacturers as they source their part / modules from smaller companies
In addition, good tip about writing software for microcontrollers, is to make software application part platform independant as much as possible. But only port architecture dependant part.
I really like your content, I thinks it's a lot more complex and fun than other RUclips channels in those subjects. But I might say, you can really make a huge step up if you develop how your voice sound in your videos, in this one for example, your voice comes sounding with a los of hiss, which make it a little bit difficult to understand those awesome things that you talk in your videos. Greetings frol Chile!!
It helps to turn on captions. I'm a native (American) English speaker, but I still usually turn on captions for most technical videos. Sometimes the captions are garbage, but this (Carl Bugeja''s) is a channel where they are usually pretty good.
@@jimjjewett thanks for the advice!!
I would even recommend to buy first, then design...
Currently air frying some chips as I watch this...
Great video, I only wish I could email it to myself 15 months ago when I was in the preliminary design phase hahaha.
Ended up having to source quite a few components from Win-Source electronics at about 600% mark up 😭
I recently ordered a bunch of (chinese) NodeMCU (ESP) Boards.. And all had fake USB-Serial chips on them that did not work at all. The chips even prevented an external USB-Serial interface to communicate with the ESPs RX and TX lines... I had to physically remove the USB-Serial chip from the NodeMCU board to get communication going. I think thats even worse then getting nothing at all :D
Lol did they actually used broken chips or was it just another China USB-Serial converter?
@@Jonas_Meyer I dont know. the Chips were unlabeled. I have decapped one but i dont have the tools to look close at the die.
You also have the option to buy in advance the parts you need and have the SMT service store it for you. It's very easy with JLCPCB, but not sure about PCBWAY. Problem is, in most cases you need to buy a full rail of 3000 components. That's not cheap and only makes sense for production. For prototyping is not an option.
It also ties you in because once you've bought those parts the only way you can get them is through assembly orders. You can't say "hi can you just ship me the rest of that reel please?"
3000 10k 0603 resistors isn't expensive at all, 3000 MCUs or other $10 each semiconductor is very pricey.
JLCPCB/LCSC (and other distributors) have some quite large mark up on some components, it's not uncommon to find the same parts available elsewhere for half the price.
@@DavidRobertsonUK Well, yes, but you need them assembled anyways, so tying to a particular SMT, especially the one of your choice is not a bad thing. No matter which SMT you use, you still need to ship them the parts. And as I said, if it is for production, JLC is much more convenient, since it saves you at least 3 steps when ordering parts and shipping them. But It is different from case to case and I'm not saying JLC is the best SMT.
I bought all of the parts at the start of the pandemic, not much of it overall, but great prices.
New Outro! Hopefully the prices and stock go back to normal sometime soon...
Very important video
Isn't this how China makes gear so cheap? They make clones of clones for production rates! You often see the same pcb design but with extra footprints to allow for the alternative components.
Really starting to understand pcb design now thanks to blokes like you Carl!
Feather boards for stm32f405 for my vescs
Can't run into a chip shortage if the chip was originally manufactured over two decades ago.
oh wait
Any thoughts on buying chips from AliExpress or Alibaba or even eBay? Any problem you have experienced?
Nice voice 🤩😍❤️❤️
We do know what caused it. It early 2020 the people who own eveything thought the real economy would crash because the governments they bought would be incapable of addressing covid, as designed. Because of this they ordered less, reserving less capacity from the chip manufactutrers, who then manufactured fewer chips. Now we're in a position where the people who own everything are having their servants panic buy, as you mentioned. There is a backlog caused by previous speculative restriction of supply that is inelastic upwards.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but the Chipsortage is refering to CPU/SoC/GPU. everything that has a short production run. and needs to be planned far ahead?
No, it's affecting all sorts of semiconductor products including very simple devices. For instance I've had issues getting some TVS diode arrays and some FETs recently, as well as ADCs, microcontrollers, MEMS clock generators, ... ... List goes on
@@DavidRobertsonUK Learned something today, thanx. I guess it might have been sort of butterfly effect. Prioritizing CPU and such, to try to meet the demands, resulting in delays in other components?
@@sundrak1 I'm not exactly sure what's going on behind the scenes but I don't think that explanation makes sense - very different manufacturing processes are used for state-of-the-art CPUs etc compared to bog standard microcontrollers and discrete devices etc. A fab that can produce the latest SoC probably can't easily switch to making simple microcontrollers overnight.
@@DavidRobertsonUK Its speculation on my part ofcourse. Alot of arm SoC's still use the old(er) process. thats why I figured it might be a butterfly kinda thing going on.
@@sundrak1 it might well be part of it, I don't know. But I don't think it's the whole story.
Make more videos
First like! Love ur projects and videos! 📹💓
You could just go back to mechanical computers
You are always advance than time
Steal from eBay. Got it.
Be careful that you get real IC’s, there are a lot of fake ones out there especially on ebay :(
Why do you put a virus picture ?!! China is running out of coal for its power plants and can no longer run the factories 100% of the time. But great video, as usual ;)
or these bum ass factories can just start making more then 2-3 chips a month...
Please 🙏 make cnc machine using dc motor and rotary encoder please please please
Please 🙏 dont spam please pleas please