RS Components & Electric car

What is RS Components

RS Components (nl.rs-online. com) is a website where you can purchase electronic components. It is part of the Electrocomponents Group (founded as Radiospares in 1937, London). Radiospares aimed to sell spare parts for (now really old) radios. When 1971 came around, Radiospares rebranded themselves as RS Components (RS probably stands for Radiospares anyhow). Currently, RS Components ships more than 50,000 parcels daily, to over 80 countries. They also sell over 500,000 products, including electronics, automation and control components, engineering tools and consumables, to over one million customers. In 2012, both RS Online and its sister company, Allied Electronics, became two of the main manufacturers and distributors for the Raspberry Pi.

What are we on about?

Well, SV. Innovum has made First Contact with RS Components (well, not really coz we can just use their website). We are now allowing students to place orders on RS Components via Innovum. Another burning question you may be asking, is: “Why would I need to order components from these guys? Why not somewhere like TinyTronics?” And that would be a great question we would love to answer. All I can say is that RS Components does more stuff with actual circuits (switches, wires, passive/active components, and tools for testing circuits, for example). This is great if you are trying to design PCBs and other things that need stuff like capacitors, diodes, and whatnot.

Using Components from RS

So now you may be thinking: “Ok, I want to use RS Components, but what can I do with the components I order?”

To answer that question, I want you to look at the images on the next page. These images show a preliminary schematic for a lighting system in an electric car (drawn by me using a program called Altium, but that’s not the point). You may now also be asking “Why does this guy need to draw schematics of the lighting system of an electric car?”. My answer would be: “It’s for a project, but also beside the point”

Anyway. Coming back to these diagrams, each component will be ordered from RS Components, then soldered onto a PCB. The aim for these schematics is to function as a lighting system (hopefully it works). There are several components in these diagrams, including: capacitors; MOSFETs; headers; Zener diodes; headers; and resistors. These components are placed in such a way, that the input from the car (i.e. turning a light on/off) is transferred through the circuit to the correct output with minimal risks of overloading. Note: these diagrams are preliminary, so the final schematics may look different. Also, other parts of the car (such as the breaking/navigation systems) that will be built may include different components. For the lighting system, these components will then be put onto a PCB and later installed in the car. Of course, RS Components offer a whole range of components, not just these ones (I only need these ones).

How to order from RS Components

Now that you’ve decided that RS Components is a cool website for us engineers, you may be asking: “How and where do I get my hands on these components?”. To answer that first you will need to visit the following website: rs-online.com and select your country (The Netherlands if you don’t know). From there, you will want to browse (or search for) the parts you want. If you already have the Manufacturer Number or the RS stock number, you can just search for that to get the exact product you need. To order from RS- online, you will need to log in to the Innovum account. (This is because only corporations can order from RS Components). If you contact the Innovum Board, they will either give you the login details, or help you to order your components.