[Cyborg] HMC5843 minimum order and pricing woes.

[Lamont Lucas]

This started as a "hey, who else wants a compass chip to help me meet 
the minimum order" but instead turned into a musing rant about pricing 
and delays.

So digikey had a bad batch of the HMC5843 3 axis compass chip, and 
they're now backordered to 5/30 on replacements. 

A user on the sparkfun forum, The_Todd, posted about this and finally 
got his replacements from honeywell, and he's been happy with the 
readings since:

http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?p=69885

I was going to order parts from honeywell directly, but a) it's a 
minimum order of 5 and b) they want $40 per chip, which is more than 
double what digikey wanted (no minimum order, $19.20 per chip)

arrow electronics also wants $40 per chip, and has no stock.

I'm not exactly pleased with the price doubling, but $40 is still better 
than the $60 that the rest of the modules go for.  However, honeywell 
claims an up to 8 week delivery, which means I can save money and get it 
at about the same time from digikey.

So at this point I think I'm just going to order from digikey and wait 
till they get their stock in around 5/30.  unless someone else has a 3 
axis compass they recommend.