On 09/04/2020 13:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 09/04/2020 12:45, Brian Reay wrote:
On 09/04/2020 12:03, Peter Parry wrote:

Electronics Weekly has a report of the re launch of Maplin Electronics
(www.maplin.co.uk) as an on-line retailer

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/ne...duino-2020-03/



It is a competitive market. Besides there being no shortage of
suppliers of genuine arduino products and numerous r pi (re)sellers,
the Chinese turn out arduino copies/clones by the container load.

Maplin were never cheap, they were sometimes useful if you needed the
odd part quickly etc but even that became questionable in later years
as local stores seemed to stock fewer and fewer components.

While I don't wish them ill, I do wonder if this will last.


Its hard to know what in fact one can do these days without a reflow
soldering station, and access to pcb manufacturing stuff. Everything is
surface mount by and large and many modules are cheaper to buy than to
make.

Most people who might have been soldering transistors in the 60s are
programming raspberry pis...


if they can actually SEE what they are doing though ..