This is great. I am <i>so</i> glad this is getting done! I've spent way too much time clicking around the horrible distributor search engines, trying to determine which parts are cheap, readily available and will remain so (these three things usually go in hand). It is incredibly difficult and time-consuming if you are looking for something like a 12MHz SMD crystal: good luck sifting through thousands of options.<p>The current selection is very limited, but still useful for many projects, I will certainly make use of it.<p>The logical next step would be a KiCAD (and possibly Eagle?) library containing all the footprints. Not just thrown in there, or auto-converted, but actually verified by a human.
To start, this is a nice idea and I'm happy to contribute a bit to it, time depending and output depending. I'll be looking for an Altium library containing these parts and links in order to stay interested.<p>The 2N7002 has always been my standby signal NMOS. There are no power FETs or IGBT modules. Be nice to include some of the Ixys stuff.<p>A hinge-type micro SD card socket would be a nice variation, something that's harder to jar loose.<p>Hirose make some pretty nice board-to-board connectors. All you have on there so far are yucky 100 mil thruhole headers. Some finer pitch stuff would be nice. And pin pitch and number need to be a sortable/searchable field. Some SMB sockets would be awesome for test points, as would some test point headers (Vector makes nice ones like the K24 series, but my buddies like the little ones with the plastic colored bushing and a ring on top).<p>There are nowhere near enough microcontrollers. You could easily have 20 MSP430s. I've had good luck with the MSP430F2246 and F5438, I believe, but we've used a ton of different varieties.<p>How about a 232 driver like the MAX232 family? Or a 485/422 transceiver, or any kind of differential driver/receiver pair. Those Analog Devices ADUM isolated transceivers are great parts.<p>And no Zeners! The BZX84C series are a nice family to start with. I want to gag over the opamp selection.<p>I don't think the kinds of specs you offer are sufficient to describe the parts there. This could be said for just about everything on that list, which is probably the biggest issue with such a list. Most parts that designers select are chosen for one of two reasons - we don't care and they're in the library, or they are the key part that makes everything else worth doing. In the first instance, this list is great. In the second, I'm going to spend a day looking at all the vendor options to pick the best part I can find. But even for the parts I don't really care about, I have some concerns - the part has to work right for the application. Active parts are specified by many key parameters and in the case of opamps in particular these parameters are not indicated at all here, so I'll end up having to look up each part's details anyway. Consider input bias current, offset voltage, 0.1-10 hz noise, 10hz-1khz integrated noise, just as a start.<p>Rant off. Nice idea, here's my two cents worth.
More info about the Common Parts Library is available here, <a href="http://octopart.com/common-parts-library/about" rel="nofollow">http://octopart.com/common-parts-library/about</a>
This is great! A few things that might be nice to add are the ATmega32U4 (on the Arduino Leonardo and Micro, among other things), the ATtiny85, the ATtiny84, and these resonators: <a href="http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/AWSCR-8.00CV-T/535-10004-1-ND/2001627" rel="nofollow">http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/AWSCR-8.00CV-T/535-...</a><p>For hand-soldering, it might be nice to include 1206 packages in addition to 0603 ones, although I realize that would make the list much longer.<p>Another good reference for this kind of thing is the Fab Lab inventory: <a href="http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/fab/inv.html" rel="nofollow">http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/fab/inv.html</a> and it might be worth looking that over to see if there's anything that seems worth adding.
Ah, funny they mention the Open Parts Library-- we bought two for stock before figuring out that it's really a DFM kinda thing, which doesn't fit with the hobbyist customer segment at all. If anybody wants to buy one from a US-based distributor, you can certainly take them off our hands: <a href="http://www.robotmesh.com/open-parts-library-basic-v2?___SID=hn" rel="nofollow">http://www.robotmesh.com/open-parts-library-basic-v2?___SID=...</a>
Awesome. We also need a repository of things that can be built solely with parts from the library. (ie "The 10 watt CPL boost regulator" etc).
For some reason, I thought it was related to GitHub and its octocats :) Nice concept.<p>Minor visual bug: <a href="http://octopart.com/#Resistors" rel="nofollow">http://octopart.com/#Resistors</a><p>'Case / Package / Footprint' input-with-dropdown border looks a bit different from other string inputs on the same page (FF 32.0.3).
Now you just need a prototyping service which has this standard library in stock, ready to be loaded into a pick and place machine.<p>It's amusing to see the world of transistors reduced to one general purpose transistor, and one FET, each in N and P polarity.