If it's a standard 0402 cap, if one specific manufacturer part on one vendor runs low or out, there are 5-10x other vendors with the same part, and probably another 10x manufactuer parts (each listed on the vendor sites) that will work
Derp. Thanks. I feel a bit silly now. :-p
In the case of caps and resistors I put part #s mostly just as example. For the most part I didn't select specific ones based on extended criteria, other than sometimes choosing low ESR, or appropriate voltage rating. The inductors tend to be more specific since the DCR is directly linked to efficiency. The ICs obviously tend to be very specific, though maybe some parts have second sources that would work.
some updates from the i2c front (a little bit technical):
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I will forward the i2c code now to bkkcoins.
Thanks! Awesome.
Nice! where does the serial number come from?
Each PIC is programmed with a serial#. This can be automated with the Microchip Hexmate utility. Since there will be multiple vendors I'd suggest something like taking the high 8 bits as a vendor id and maybe I'll keep a register so that serial # ranges don't overlap. The only real use of the serial# is so that I2C slave arbitration is ensured that any slave has a priority when enumerating so that each one gets a unique address.
So each vendor needs to make sure each K16 they produce has a unique serial number programed into the PIC chip?