Electric Dollar Store

While working on I²CDriver, I wanted to try it out with as many I²C devices as possible.  Surely, I thought, somebody makes cheap interchangeable I²C parts that I could stock up on and use like Legos. Well, not really. Sparkfun and Adafruit do sell a lot of I²C parts, but they're all different sizes and pinouts. Once you've seen one, you've seen one. Sparkfun does use a standard connector called Qwiic, but it doesn't allow board mounting. What if I²C devices were really cheap and interchangeable? Personally I'd buy handfuls of them, just to have around, like I do with headers and proto boards. Why isn't someone doing this already?!

That was the idea. This is the result. Useful things at low prices. Things you can't find elsewhere, and things you can only find at much higher price points. Prices so low you can stock up. As cheap as chips. Welcome to my dollar store.

Each module is the same size and pinout. The name is in the corner. The four pins (GND, VCC, SDA, SCL) are castellated so you can solder headers or mount the module onto a board. The address selectors (A2, A1, A0) work the same way for every module. Because Electric Dollar Store is an integrated operation (Boktech does the PCBA, we do everything else here in the US) we can maintain top quality without needing large margins.

Backers of the I²CDriver got a bunch of these modules. Their backing paid for the first volume run of them, so not only did they launch the I²CDriver, but also the Electric Dollar Store lines of modules and accessories.

This past week I have been working on the website. It's quite satisfying to see it all come together.

The product pages are a work in progress. I'll be writing the summary for each module this week. Each module has the code to drive it on the product page (at launch there will be code for I²CDriver, Arduino and MicroPython).

That's all for this week. I'll be sending out the launch announcement in next week's newsletter.