Disclaimer: I am NOT being paid by anyone to write this article. This is my experience and a thanks to the sponsors. Additionally, its a tutorial for anyone in the design challenge on how to use the budget.
So why this post you ask? Well as a part of this challenge we were given a budget to buy parts with. It translates to 16,880 INR and I started to look at what I could buy. My plan was to buy all TI and Wurth Parts since this design challenge is sponsored by them along with element14. I really did not have an idea how much stuff was in the element14 catalog. Guys element14 is CANDYLAND! I spent nearly 3 days sitting in front of my PC just browsing the catalog. From screws to resistors to tweezers to multimeter to kits to modules to chemical supplies to tools- the list goes on and on and on. So what did I get? A grand total of 22 items which have a lot of TI parts and a lot of other parts, modules etc etc. I had to bug Dr. Defoe a lot of times with queries and as a thanks I am writing this article so that other people may not make mistakes that I did or maybe answer questions that I asked. So here is what I did...
Firstly in addition to the account at element14.com I created another account at the in.element14.com which is the site for India where we buy parts. When creating a new ID, there is a requires a Sales tax number. The official advice is to enter eight zeros i.e. 00000000 and proceed. A sales tax number is for vendors who are buying parts to sell in their store or who are going to use them in a product and sell that. We are not going to do any such thing hence this is OK.
Next is the FUN part
. SHOP. Search for parts and go though the catalog and press the buy button to add it to the cart. Make sure that you get everything you want in one go. You can not use the voucher code again so make it count. I think I made a purchase of 16,879.52 and I had so many things I still wanted to buy like the PSOC4 kit which Mr. Wong used in his contest. Anyways buy all you want. When you are done, click on the amount at the top right corner of the page. This should take you to the shopping cart page where you will see all the items you selected. At the end of the list, there is a place which asks you about "voucher code". This is where you enter the code supplied by Dr. Defoe in his email.
Then click check-out and it will ask you your mode of payment. You may select either and proceed by clicking next and enter your invoicing details. I selected the normal way of delivery instead of UPS since there is a price difference. Click next and it will take you to the payment details page. Enter the appropriate details and since we have a voucher code, you should see that the total amount is zero. The official statement is that we will be liable to pay taxes and freight as applicable. This is really not that much and since I selected the 'economy/standard' version of dispatch instead of the UPS, the freight value came out to be zero. I contacted element14 about the taxes since the amount is zero and my total cost is less than the voucher value, I was told to use the trade account to place order and that "they would take care of it at the back end". Thats it!
Please note that if you place an order larger than the voucher value, you are obviously going to have to pay freight and taxes as applicable. I would advise all not to do so and place commercial orders separately.
I hope this is of help to someone and welcome comments and discussions to share experiences.
Thanks.
PS: I know that there is someone at element14 who makes sure that all roadtest items reach us without us having to deal with customs. My thanks to them and the entire element14 team, specially the road test team. I have some experience running marketing and logistics and I know its not as easy as it looks. Many thanks to Dr. Defoe who answered my MANY emails within 20 minutes of me sending them. You are blazing fast. Element14 team you rock! 