Wiring the house, part 2: Buying 1-wire sensors and accessories

So, having moved from a flat to a house a couple of months back it was time to do some actual work on a home monitoring system.

First task: to find a good source for the needed 1-wire sensors and other electronics and hardware.
Some digging around, comparing a lot of prices resulted in the matrix below.
I then ended up buying my 1-wire products and components from Homechip and Hobby-boards, with some additional components from Electrokit.

Please note that prices and other aspects of the stores are expected to change, the data below represent a snapshot as of August 2009. They should in any case provide some starting points for your own 1-wire online shopping adventures.

Vendor Country Comment
Homechip UK Good prices and fast, affordable delivery across Europe, they don’t have quite the selection of 1-wire products as for example Hobby-Boards or DigiKey (who are outstanding when it comes to components).
But with Homechip offering the core component I needed while also being European the first batch of 1-wire sensors were bought from them. Might try other providers later.A good thing about Homechip is that they carry the
T-sense (made by IButtonLink) at an affordable price. VERY convenient temperature sensor! Ok, a bit more expensive than buying the components, but oh so convenient..
Low shipping costs also to rest of Europe outside of UK.
Hobby-Boards US Nice store with some assembled and ready-to-go 1-wire sensor modules, such as the 8 channel relay board or the nice little DS2423-based dual counter(Note: Homechip carries a similar counter).A GREAT thing about Hobby-Boards is that they offer both schematics and PCB layout for free on their web! This gives some very good inspiration for those of us who like to build things from scratch but have spent the last fifteen years doing other things than designing electronic circuits.Reasonable prices but longer/more expensive shipping if you are in Europe.
Embedded Data Systems US This company among other things makes the HA7Net, which is an Ethernet equipped 1-wire master controller with some real intelligence in it. It contains a web server, upgradable firmware, various tools for reading/writing/maintaining a 1-wire network. The HA7Net also has three 1-wire ports, making it dead simple to create a star-formed 1-wire network.The HA7Net acts as the 1-wire centre point in my network, it is then read by various other software on the internal TCP/IP network.
Temperatur.nu Sweden temperatur.nu contains both temperatures across Sweden updated by people’s personal computer connected weather stations, as well as an online shop and a good forum for Swedes interested in home and weather monitoring systems. Quite a few good 1-wire related threads in the forums.The store has a fair number of components as well as pre-assembled sensor modules. Prices are a bit high compared to for example Homechip but if you are in Sweden and need fast delivery it may be worth it.
The store also has various home automation products, such as radio controlled 220V switches.
IbuttonLink US Makers of some good 1-wire products, such as the LinkUSB 1-wire interface, which can be used instead of the standard DS9490R from Maxim. They also make the very convenient T-Sense temperature sensor, but as this is available from HomeChip at the same or even better price (given the current USD to EUR exchange rate), I’ve got my T-Sensors from Homechip.
1.wire shop Germany Expensive German online store
Fuchs Shop Germany Expensive German online store
SparkFun US GREAT company with a fantastic amount of cool gadgets and electronics kits in the store, usually with very affordable prices. If you like fiddling around with electronics and microcontrollers you’ll love SparkFun. SparkFun offer free schematics for many of their kits, they also have good tutorials and forums. Great site!
Digikey US
Intl
Giant retailer of electronics components. More than 1900 employees, more than 450.000 products in stock. If you need an electronics component, Digikey is likely to have it, and at a good price. Based in US means longer delivery and higher shipping costs though.
Edit: Turns out Digikey has a great international service as well! For their Swedish customers they even offer free shipping on orders of more than €65, which is pretty easy to reach when looking through their catalog…
Electrokit Sweden Probably Sweden’s best online store for electronics components and Arduino microcontrollers. Good prices, very affordable shipping costs.
Lawicel-shop Sweden Sells various embedded systems products, including Arduino boards. Seem to be more expensive than Electrokit.
Maplin UK Sells all sorts of electronics and components. Might be worth considering for UK people.
Energibutiken Sweden Online store with a small but fairly good selection of products relating to energy monitoring. They among other things have an interesting data logger for those who don’t want to be bothered by running a server for their 1-wire projects.