[eisen]

IMO - This article is an over simplification. Data sheets need to be book worthy documentation due to the behavior of complex semiconductors. I believe Datasheets are law abiding documentation? If something is out of spec or out of characteristics is is considered faulty which means loss of money or competitors can get in.

What I'm really interested is in what peoples opinions are regarding the navigation of content and material of these large scale Semiconductor Sites. They have 50k plus products which are all very complicated and specific to a use-case. I find there is a constant struggle to route people to the right solution especially when engineers can use different parts in new creative ways. ADI, Texas Instruments, and Maxim all fall in this boat.

[blackguardx]

>I believe Datasheets are law abiding documentation? If something is out of spec or out of characteristics is is considered faulty which means loss of money or competitors can get in.

There are plenty of errors in datasheets. Analog Devices even has this disclaimer at the bottom of their datasheets:

"Information furnished by Analog Devices is believed to be accurate and reliable. However, no responsibility is assumed by Analog Devices for its use, nor for any infringements of patents or other rights of third parties that may result from its use. Specifications subject to change without notice."

[bradfa]

TI's website is still pretty decent for navigating around and finding the parts that'll solve your problem. ST seems to be making it harder and harder. The former Linear website was very easy to use. Maxim has always sucked, in my experience. NXP has an OK website but generally quite good datasheets.

If you're designing electronics for profit (not hobby), reach out to your local non-stocking distributor (Arrow, Avnet, Future, etc) and ask to talk to the local sales person and FAE. Tell these people your problem. They have contacts at a bunch of semi vendors and the FAE's main job is to know what parts do what. A good local FAE and sales person are worth their cost when you're trying to find what parts to use, even though they get much less useful once you're into the minutia of any given part or design.

Finding good and cheap ways to solve electronics design problems really comes down to experience. Not that you've done a ton of designs yourself but more that you've looked at a variety of ways that other people have solved problems and then tried to understand why they did it that way. Working at more than just one company where you get to do design reviews is a huge help with this. Ask lots of questions at design reviews, challenge the designer on why they're doing things a particular way even if you don't know how to do it better, the designer probably contemplated a handful of ways to solve the problem and will be happy to explain their decision to you. It's also helpful if you can work with a team who are trying to build low volume (<10k units per year) products and a team building high volume (>1M units per year) as there's very different tradeoffs that engineering, manufacturing, and the business are willing to make as volumes change.

[pininja]

> Datasheets are law abiding documentation?

Ideally true, but in practice I’ve seen certain performance claims (such as battery cell capacity degradation in a battery data sheet) aren’t accurate or depend a lot on your application. If they are reputable, I assume they are trying to estimate an honest average.

Navigating the sites are challenging when I don’t already know which part I want, for sure. I wish there were better ways to explore sites for certain keywords in a data sheet.

[nitrogen]

Do search engines like Octopart or Digikey help?

[joshvm]

Digikey has one of the better search engines, not least because you get preview thumbnails of almost everything, and you can search in single unit quantities. It also has some intelligence when filtering parts by value (eg Leds by wavelength).

The problem is usually knowing the names of things, and eventually you learn what keywords to search for eg 2row 10way for a 2x5 connector. Everything is mostly standardised.

Octopart is best for finding stock, I wouldn't use it to locate a new part.

For finding new chips, like random sensors, the best way is to trawl the major IC websites (Ti, Max, etc) and see what pops up. You can still get samples from most of these places, and of quite expensive parts too.