Briefly, I’m an old guy who got interested in electronics in high school but got diverted into the printing trade (offset lithography; ink & paper) to make a living. I’m retired now, so I watch a ton of YouTube and I got hooked on Mr. Carlson’s Lab and his fascinating videos. Now I want to dabble. Oh yeah, I never got very good at soldering, but that’s a topic for another thread.
I used to go straight to my local Radio Shack if I needed hookup wiring and components like capacitors, resistors, transistors or plastic project boxes. Unfortunately good old RS is dead.
What is the easiest-but-reliable company to find mundane, common parts like barrel-style DC power connectors like you find on the ends of any DC-voltage wall wart? I currently need a simple female 7.4mm jack input barrel connector with either solder connectors or screw terminals so I can (try to) solder in a pair of short wires to come out the other end. I looked at Mouser, but it gave me a headache from the way the product selection screen was laid out. I ended up ordering a 12″ long “dongle” (that what the listing called it) that had the connector I need, but it has a smaller 5.5mm male connector on the other end. I figured I can just snip off the 5.5mm connector and strip back an inch of sheathing to expose the negative & positive wires.
So where do you guys get parts?
Hi, well… it all depends on what you are looking for as in: when need some high quality active components such as transistors, IC;s diodes/Specific LED’s, specific high quality and or precision trust wordy capacitors or high quality relays, sensors, etc (so anything special !!!) Mouser and DigiKey is 9 times out of 10 the way to go. For anything usual such as barrel connectors , pins, spacers, stainless steel screws enclosures, electronic component organizers, plastic containers etc also depends where you live so: it could be local town stores, amazon, eBay, Chinese websites such as Aliexpress, GearBest, Temu, Banggood (but make sure you shop with caution) as with them is kind of risky if you don’t know exactly what to shop for and sometimes the quality is…well questionable but as the time passes and you gain experience in electronics you can learn to shop safer with them too. For anything NOS (components that are hard to find these days because they are out of production) I my experience eBay was almost always the way to go.