I needed to refill some of my SMD stock so I went browsing around some of the usual online shops like Elemen14 (Farnell), Mouser and Digikey to find some good deals.

After a bit of browsing I found out that I can get a full reel (5000 pcs) of 0805 resistors for $9.50 from Digikey 10K0805 + $40 in shiping to Malaysia +  most likely an additional 20-30% in import duties and taxes.  If I just get one reel i think it will slip through customs, but $40 in shipping for $10 of stuff doesn't sound too good to me.  Getting 10-15 reels to lower the shipping cost per reel would most likely invoke the wrath of customs :-)

The two major suppliers operating locally here in the region are Element14 and RS.  RS is very expensive but Elemen14 isn't too bad even if they have considerably higher prices than Mouser & Digikey in the US.  Element14 have free overnight courier shipping from their warehouse in Singapore to Malaysia which is definitely a plus.

A full reel from Element14 is normally about RM 124 ($41) - four times as expensive as Digikey!  Man, sometimes I really wish I lived in the states...

Of course getting smaller quantities on cut tapes is possible, but the price per resistor then gets ridiculously high.  But after some more browsing I found a number of values that were really cheap even in the cut-tape versions as long as you get at least 250 of them.

For instance 22K 1% 0805 is RM 0.01 each. For 1000 pcs the total cost is RM 10 ($3.30) or $16 for 5000 pcs as in a full reel. This is actually not too bad.  There are only like a dozen of values with this price, but many of the values are quite usable like 120Ω, 1K,  22K and 100K.  Full list and links can be found on my jellybean page.

If our're brave enough you can actually buy reels with 0805's directly from China from one of the many stores in Taobao.  $4.60 for reel of 0805 1% or $3.80 for 5% is definitely a good price!  You have to use a re-shipping agent that will add 5-10%  to the total price for their services but still.....  :-)

A couple of days ago I finally ditched my old Blackberry Bold for a nice shiny Samsung Galaxy S.  This is something I've been  thinking about doing for quite some time  now and when my wife wanted a new phone to replace her really old W880i we both got the Galaxy. (How "special" ain't that?  It feels a bit funny to whip out the same phone as your wife :)

Anyhow - back in the days I did some minor tests of developing a game for the Blackberry, now it's time to start some developing activities for the Android  platform.   I'm no java guru - but hey! how hard can it be cobble up a decent application in java for the Android?  I've been programming for 33 years now, it's just another api and language to master.  Same-same but different.

A while ago I've bought a book "Hello, Android" second edition and read whilst getting some rays at the beach.  Time to replace the theoretical knowledge with some real hands-on experience;

Downloads

I headed over to http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and downloaded all the necessary softwares .  The android-sdk_r06-windows.zip from android.com, the newest java development kit  jdk-6u21-windows-i586 from sun.com and finally the  eclipse-SDK-3.5.2-win32 from eclipse.org.   I followed their recommendations and avoided the Helios (3.6) version of Eclipse since it apparently got some incompabilites with the Android development kit.

Installation

Install the JDK with full options.  Unzip the Eclipse into C:\eclipse, run eclipse.exe and wait for the prompt for where to store your workspaces.  I ticked the box for remembering the workspace so I don't have to select again at next start.

I unpacked the android-sdk into C:\eclipse\android in order to keep the entire development platform together in one place.

I installed the ADT package as instructed by the android website. In Eclipse go to Help|Add New Software..., click Add...  enter "Android Tools" and the URL as https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ Tick the box in the list of available softwares andclick Next.  (Go and get a cup of coffee now since the dependency calculations takes a long time) Click some more Nexts,  Finish, and Yes'es and wait a bit more.

After a restart of Eclipse I went to Windows|Preferences... and told it where  I installed the android-sdk.  After that I could go into Windows|Android SDK & AVD Manager to download the API's and emulators in the Available Packages-section.  Feeling adventurous I got them all inclusive of the USB package.  Since I'm currently on Wimax internet with a not so good speed and the full monty had a lot of downloads I decided to go to bed and let the installer work it's magic by itself during the night.

After the installation was done restarted Eclipse and then created a new emulator device named with the old Android 1.6 OS on it.  Click the start button and wait a minute or two while the emulator starts up Android for the first time.

Now.....  Time to start a new project and do some real work on it.

I think I'm just going to use a short and (in)famous sentence for this very first entry of the Small Room Labs blog.

Hello World!

Wikipedia got some information about Hello World