Most popular hobby electronic parts

https://partsbox.com/blog/top-10-hobby-electronic-components-2024.html

by jwr • 2 years ago

4 4 2 years ago

jwr2• 2 years ago

I'm the founder of PartsBox, which is used by thousands of hobbyists/makers to manage their electronic parts inventory. PartsBox is and will be free for hobbyists/makers.

I figured that with so many people using it, I might as well count how popular electronic components are, and took some time to generate a ranking of most popular parts and write it up.

RetroTechie• 2 years ago

For some context: this list compiled the most popular parts, as appearing in PartsBox users' inventory.

a) That does not equate to "parts most popularly used" in those hobbyists' projects. One may well have a stack of 7805s in one's inventory, and then go for a low-drop or switching alternative in a project. Or put a uC in nearly any project, but have 20 different types of those.

b) As anyone who's ever been to a meeting of electronics enthousiasts, radio amateurs, hackerspace etc knows: parts inventories age. In some collections a good % of parts is decades old.

Many parts are just to have something on hand when one feels like experimenting / designing something. But 1st experiments & published designs can be like baby strollers vs. SUVs.

Besides: nothing wrong with many of the 'ancients'. 1N4148 has good specs for a small-signal diode. The 555 is, and will remain a classic. Exact specs of an opamp don't matter much in many circuits, as long as it's "good enough". Etc etc.

jwr2• 2 years ago

All true!

I guess more precise definitions of "popular" could be constructed, but that's the simplest one and I went with it, especially as it isn't particularly invasive or creepy (we're just counting how many people have a certain linked part in their database, think of it as a counter per linked part that gets incremented if somebody adds a part and decremented if they delete the part).

FloatArtifact• 2 years ago

Coming from the perspective of the DYI hardware community I have some thoughts.

Most DYI enthusiasts post a build. This includes usually a detailed parts list to a variety of sources.

Overtime this list ages and that can be quite fast. Parts go out of stock, deprecate, or are no longer sold by the particular vendors / URL posted.

I would love to see a platform that helps source and maintain those lists with the community. It could be an aggregate multivender list with a preference to your sources but allows a centralized purchase for the DYI kit. Perhaps there could be a small premium to help sustain the platform.

Utilizing the above idea they're also could be a co-op concept. This allows the community to buy parts/manufacture in bulk. Allowing x amount of people to sign up for x number of kits providing a nice price to all involved.

Most popular hobby electronic parts

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