Where is everyone getting their microcontrollers from?

[zestynorsegod]

 Hello all! I'm pretty new to the DIY keyboard scene, and I have decided I want to go the hard route of making a board from scratch. The biggest issue I've been running into is what MCU I should use for my project, and where to get it. I've seen a lot of guides using the atmega32u4, and I've looked into some of the stm32 chips as well. Unfortunately, everything I look at is completely sold out, and from what I can tell, this has been an ongoing issue for a while. For those of you who are more experienced and/or know what you're doing (I sure don't lol), how have you been getting around the shortages? Do I not know where to look, or does everyone else just have a supply of chips from previous projects? I apologize if this comes off as ignorant or annoying, I just can't seem to find the answer myself anywhere I look. Any help you can give me is much appreciated.

[Tactile]

The Teensy is in stock. If you'd rather roll your own, Digi-Key have 32U4 in stock.

[Findecanor]

I've heard from other places that microcontrollers are sold out at many electronic component vendors. Hopefully this won't last too long.

If I were you, I would choose a microcontroller that has good support first by the firmware you are planning to use, and then which can interface any other chips that you might use with minimal complexity.

For instance, the ATmega32u4 is very common for keyboards (because of that Teensy 2.0 microcontroller board), but it is usually run at full clock speed (only 16 MHz) which requires that it runs on 5V. Then you can't use any peripheral chips that runs on 3.3V, at least without level converters.
In the reverse, if you are going to support underglow using addressable LEDs, those are typically using 5V logic.

[9gel]

Digikey has ATMEGA32U4 in stock, right now. Get them before they are gone...

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/embedded-microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIIYBcC2BTA5nAzGArgFhAF0BfIA

LCSC has them too

https://lcsc.com/search?q=atmega32u4

Or order direct from Microchip. If you can wait a month, they have some shipping by end of Sept 2021.

https://www.microchipdirect.com/product/search/all/atmega32u4

(but these guys keep changing my order dates...)

Someone in the know told me Microchip is making a batch of ATMEGA32U4 in September. Know that these chips are made in batches, so if you missed one, you'll have to wait till the next batch. There's an advantage for ATMEGA32U4 - while it's popular for the keyboard crowd, it's actually too expensive for production use. So we aren't competing with the big OEMs for this chip. ST chips however might run out faster, because there are more real production uses.

[jamster]

I thought the shortages were fairly product-specific, or rather that it didn't affect the atmegas, because I have seen loads online both in China and on western keyboard sites. I ordered a couple of Elite-C boards from keeb.io and they shipped quickly (still haven't got them, but I'm out of country).