Lower cost Digilent Dev boards for Kiwis

[Gra]

Having recently listened to the podcast by Digilent’s founder, and hearing about how the company started, and that Dev boards are bought by students using their Pizza and Beer budget, I thought the following may be good news. 

 

Here in NZ life is pretty sweet, but because we are a long way from, well from everyone really... buying things from places like the USA can end up more expensive than you’d imagine.

Here is an example, when I bought an Arty board it cost $99, granted that’s not a lot of money for this great little piece of kit.. but the postal cost to get it here was an additional $70.

There should also be 15% sales tax added at the NZ border, but on low value items the nice guys at NZ customs often just let you off with the bill.

 

There is some good news...

 

RS Components have opened a branch right here in NZ, and they sell Digilent stuff.

They don't have heaps of Digilent stuff at the moment.. But I can see 10 Digilent dev boards on their website. The fact is, I can now buy a Digilent PMod board for less than the cost of the USA postage alone.

 

The next thing that caught my eye is the local postage.. On the RS website it says FREE NZ delivery for all online orders.

This is really, really unusual here in NZ, in fact I cant think of another company that does this. I usually pay $20 to $40 for postage on electronic components.

 

Hope that's useful... Enjoy the saved Pizza money.

 

Gra

 

It would be great to see more Digilent stuff available from RS Components..

[Bianca]

Hello Gra,

Unfortunately RS Components is not a Digilent distributor. They can't sell Digilent boards. Fortunately they are a Microchip distributor and as long as our boards are also Microchip boards like the Chipkit boards or some PMODS they can be found and sold by their distributors. 

I don't know when or if RS Compents will become a Digilent distributor but you can consult the full list here. Maybe you can find some distributor closer to you and reduce the cost of the shipment if you need something that they don't have in their store.

Best regards,

Bianca

[Gra]

Hello Bianca,

 

Thanks for the distributer list, its a pity that RS Components aren't a Digilent distributer, also it didn't occur to me to go to Blackbox in Oz.

I think of Blackbox as the place to go for Xilinx training, but as you pointed out they are a Digilent distributer, so I'll contact those guys next time I need a dev board.

 

Anyhow its great that we can now buy some Diligent boards locally, and a bigger range of electronic components too.

 

Kind Regards Gra