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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

There's actually tons of really interesting microcontrollers of every size and shape.

Many of them are available as dev boards for under $20.

You can burn plenty of hours and dollars browsing all the good stuff on electrodragon at https://www.electrodragon.com/product-category/dev-board/

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If anyone wants to get into hobby electronics, please just go on AliExpress. It has everything and it's way cheaper.

I've ordered from Ali Express, but a few day to a few weeks later I get a message from someone who has not shipped my item and thinks my order and payment was the first step in a negotiation.

Can you please tell me how to deal with Ali Express sellers?

I have several hundred dollars of embedded systems parts on order from Chinese eBay sellers right now.

With AliExpress, my orders never feel like a negotiation. I put stuff in the cart, eventually push the "buy this stuff" button, give them money, and stuff eventually shows up -- just as with other e-commerce sites for decades.

Sometimes it's slower (months), and sometimes it's stupid-fast (a few days), but outside of things like Chinese New Year the sellers generally seem to be very prompt at handling the orders and getting things into the delivery stream.

I've come to expect most things to show up in a couple of weeks (at least here in the States).

I'm not doing anything particularly weird, I don't think. My order history consists of almost entirely of small electronics (sometimes components, sometimes populated PCBs) and 3D printer parts, from dozens of different sellers.

Just be aware, returns are essentially not possible. It's prohibitively expensive to send the item back to China.

While it is certainly true that shipping from the US to China is expensive, it is my understanding that returns for many kinds of items are free these days, using a shipping label generated by AliExpress.

(How they handle that on their end is really not something that I think I need to worry about.)

they will generally refund you if you are unhappy

That sounds more like Alibaba, where it operates like a B2B type transaction. In my experience, just talk to them, sure it might take more time but you can usually get a good price if you’re buying higher quantities.

Pick the ones that give a delivery deadline (5/7 days). No problems at all (at least from UK), always arrives ahead of schedule.

Never experienced that on AliExpress over the last decade.

Nowadays it just feels like Amazon without the middlemen and slightly slower shipping. I usually receive my stuff within a week (central europe).

With a side serving of fake parts, multi-week transit times, and the added benefit of propping up the Chinese regime.

I would instead recommend Adafruit. No, they're not cheaper, but you pay for knowing that the device will work right out of the box. You get excellent documentation, user forums, and probably most important, working demo code with all the source on github.

That's worth paying a few extra bucks for, IMO.

I'd rather get a clone from China and use all that stuff anyway.

To each their own, I guess. If a business is going to those lengths to support their product, I'd prefer to throw them a few bucks when I can.

Not good advice.

Buy from a reputable local firm, pay a few extra bucks.

Support local businesses.

Set aside greed.

Pay $20 for a part you can get for $3.

More to this world than a handful of bucks, my friend.

> please just go on AliExpress

There are too many documented cases of fake (and nonfunctional chips sold as AVR MCUs) that it’s not worth it. For jellybean components, sure. AVRs like those referenced in TFA, not for me.

I've ordered many microcontrollers from AE and they've all worked.

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