I’ve been trawling through ebay China (just found the new “Worldwide” flag!) for fun components to experiment with my Raspberry Pi. I must say though, the “Best Offer” function is pointless, the sellers just decline your offer and counter offer for about 1% less than the Buy It Now price.

I got a PAM8403 stereo amplifier to replace the crumby one I’ve got in my radio project at the moment, I want to solder on some pin headers so I can unplug the speakers, USB power and 3.5mm audio jack when I need to, also I believe it has an all-in-one volume/power knob instead of two separate ones, £4.27 for two.

I’ve ordered some female-to-female breadboard jumper cables to go with the above, I’ll solder jumper pins to the speakers too rather than soldering on the male end of a F-M jumper cables I have for the GPIO-to-breadboard, £1.65 for 40!

Also on order is the HC-SR501 infrared motion sensor for £1.30, similarly I’ve ordered the HC-SR04 ultrasonic range sensor which can measure how far away something is by the time it takes for sound to bounce off it, £1.29

I was also looking for some better switches than the ones I current use in my radio project, some places were selling them for a £1.25 for 5 or £1.35 for 10, I got 20 for £1.20!

I’ve bought a 2nd Model-B RPi for £28.07, I was thinking of a Model-A for my radio, but they’ve gone up to £20.05 so not worth losing ethernet, half the ram and a usb slot for £8

I’ll need some more breadboard soon, although I must have a look around in France for my veroboard stuff, as I know I have a shedload of solder and a veroboard punch somewhere, as well as my multimeter and Dremel.

I’ve had to pay the extortionate amount of £20.49 for a 7-port powered USB hub (D-Link DUB-H7/B) as I can’t find any other hub that doesn’t have issues with the RPi. I have also ordered a 5V 3A replacement PSU for my crappy Dynamode hubs in the hope that it will be as good as the 2A one I’ve got (that is no longer available) and better than the crappy 500mA/1A PSU’s that came with them, £2.85

Update: I got an old RL-S5610/SBBW 7-segment display working using just GPIO pins and 330ohm resistors: Youtube

Update 2: the USB hub didn’t work at all so is being RMA’d now, the Pi just about managed to boot, but ethernet, keyboard and mouse didn’t work, an LED on the GPIO was flickering the current was so low, 1.2A per port my arse!