Are Eval-Boards now a treasure?

Yes, one more post related to the component shortage..., but this time at home :)

We are struggling every day with the shortage of Electronic components, not only in our daily job, but also at hobby level. I was preparing a prototype on which I have been working at home for some time, nothing fancy, just a Motor Control for a Milling Machine. Till now I was using well known BlackPill or Weact boards, since I always like to test the code, before starting with the PCB (Intermediate programming skills :) ). Now I wanted to design the PCB and again the same pain: There are no MCUs available. It doesn't matter which MCU family, with all common suppliers like Mouser, Farnell, Digikey it's the same. Where does that leave us? Keep the Eval-Board or cannibalize the MCU soldered on the Eval-Board?

I can imagine you have already experienced the same issues in your daily job. Sometimes we deal with purchasing department (If you are lucky, and you have these guys) in order to get devices. However, a lot of times the effort of getting these ICs is not on the Engineer's shoulders, but on Purchasing directly. So we don't suffer the real difficulties of getting components, till we need to find something for ourselves, or till we struggle changing a component on a PCB which should be FULL compatible with the previous one.

Nowadays, a lot of developers have already suffered in their daily job the need to reuse components from already built PCBs, or they're just trying to find components anywhere to place them in new PCBs.

Will 2023 be the year in which the situation will be more relaxed, like it was in 2010-2020?

And another question to the people who like to do projects at home: What about platforms like Aliexpress? I saw several ICs, which I am searching for, on this platform. However, they are not available anywhere, only there. The endless discussion: Are they just copies? Are they genuine? Are they parts refused by the quality check on the production line? There are several videos on different platforms regarding this "copy" topic. However, in the end, how do you know what exactly you are buying? At last resource, just have a try.

I will try to keep up my development with my precious Eval-Board. Seeing the situation on some places, selling components for 10 times their original price, and the same with other platforms like Raspberry Pi with prices higher than $150: I would recommend you to keep your Eval-Boards as if they were gold.

Have a good week.