Newbie question: sourcing parts for projects

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First off, apologies if the Particle community is not the best place to ask this question as it is generic and not truly specific to Particle. I hope that someone can point me in the right direction.

I have my first Photon and have been playing around a bit.
I now find myself full of ideas on how to put the Photon (or a fleet of them) to use doing various useful things.
However, I need all the hardware parts to connect with the Photon to make things happen.

Can anyone provide advice or a source of information on how to go about sourcing hardware parts.

As an example, I want to make a version of the Carloop product (www.carloop.io) that will work on the ISO 9141 bus instead of the CAN bus. I need to source almost the full bill of materials for the carloop, with some modifications to the list of parts. That might also involve finding a local shop to produce a single PCB (eventually more if I am lucky) from design files.

@peekay123, I noticed that you are very active on these forums, and am guessing we are located in the same area. Can you provide me any tips for local resources or ordering parts from Canada?

Thanks!
Al

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@cyclin_al, I source my parts from Digikey and Mouser during low volume prototyping. I get my PCBs made at dirtypcbs.com or oshpark.com.

For higher volume production, I would go to China for manufacturing and sourcing of your BOM. Some information can be had here:

https://docs.particle.io/guide/how-to-build-a-product/manufacturing/

BTW, where are you located?

:smile:

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Hi @peekay123,

I am located in Luskville (think Lusk Falls hiking trail in Gatineau Park).
However, my office moved to Huntclub & Merivale area (not impressed with the new commute).
I cover a lot of the city every day. What area are you located at?

Locally, I have discovered Active Tech (active123.com) and buyapi.ca (cheap delivery to the UPS Store at Kanata Centrum), but I discovered that covers more the generic items.

Thanks for the tips; it really helps to have good leads rather than blind experiments sending out money and hoping for parts.

Cheers!
Al

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Al, also forgot to mention robotshop.com, abra-electronics.com and of course, aliexpress.com

:smile:

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