[sdiy] AD9833 Signal Generator Module price.. fake or not ? Questioning..

[brianw]

Companies like Texas Instruments will often sell Evaluation Boards for $5, even though the primary part costs more than $10 or $15, not to mention all of the other parts. For TI, taking a loss on Evaluation Boards is a way to make it easy for designers to use their parts. Presumably, a design might end up using tens of thousands of parts in production, so TI earns back their losses.

The AD9833 Signal Generator Module is an Analog Devices chip, so it's safer to avoid Amazon.com and AliExpress to go directly to the source.

https://www.analog.com/en/products/ad9833.html#hardware-ecosystem

Unfortunately, AD is charging about $100 for their Evaluation Board. This is probably a well-designed board that will last a while.

I have noticed that there are sometimes cheap Evaluation Boards for popular chips. I've tried some of these, and they might stop working after a brief use. Mostly, it's because the design is not robust. In a few cases, like Microchip PIC boards, the knock-off was actually more expensive than buying the original directly from Microchip.

Basically, there is a wide range of pricing and quality, so it really helps to learn the marketplace for a given chip. You could even contact the Analog Devices support, mention that you're interested in the AD9833, but you're on a budget, and ask for their recommendations.

Brian

p.s. I'm very fond of a particular $5 Texas Instrument LaunchPad board because it not only has a built-in USB JTAG interface, but the board is designed so that you can desolder a set of resistors connecting the JTAG interface to the on-board chip, and then use a ribbon cable to connect the JTAG to the same processor on your own PCB. Since USB JTAG interfaces sell for much more than $5, I have repeatedly purchased LaunchPad boards and reworked the option jumpers to convert them to standalone USB JTAG interfaces. Like I said, it pays to know the whole ecosystem for a part, and how you can take advantage of deals like this.


On May 19, 2025, at 8:26 AM, Jean-Pierre Desrochers wrote:
> While I was watching a Youtube video on using the
> AD9833 Signal Generator Module (and it worked using an Arduino) 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAuL4cLVNJI <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAuL4cLVNJI>
> I checked the actual available sellers for this thing..
>  
> Amazingly I found that places like Digikey or Mouser would
> sell the chip only for $23.47CAD (reliable and original)
> while places like Amazon or Aliexpress would sell
> a complete evaluation board for around $5.00CAD
> including an installed chip !
> What’s goind on ?
> 
> I know many of these installed chip are fake ones
> But I can tell many users bought these cheap boards
> and they worked at that low prices .. !!!
>  
> Very special..

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/attachments/20250519/c84b0786/attachment.htm>