Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 12th. Make your mom an awesome & original LED lit card with the Bare Conductive Card Kit.

For the mom on the go, we suggest the Minty Boost  so she always stays charged.

Get you mom into wearable electronics with the Flora GPS starter pack, she will never loose track of you again.

Use the Adafruit Beginner LED Sewing Kit to light up some homemade origami or embroidery.

Wrap your mothers vase or bouquet with Litex White LEDs on white fabric ribbon to brighten her day.

If your mom is a fan of the legendary Transistor Man diagram from Horowitz & Hill’s “The Art of Electronics,” get her the Transistor Man Shirt

If your Mom hasn’t touched a soldering iron, we have some things we think she’ll love, like the the iNecklace.

Order ASAP for your gift to arrive on time!

If you haven’t seen these darling little “invention kits” before, the abbreviated description would be that it is a device that turns the objects in your environment into a controller much like a keyboard. In fact, like a keyboard, the device sends simple keypresses to your computer so you can use the MaKey-MaKey to trigger almost anything that you can assign a quick key or macro to, or use an application that remaps your MaKey-MaKey (or your keyboard) to perform even more functions!

The kit is ready to go out of the box requiring nothing beyond a computer with a USB port. But it is the process of exploring the lightly conductive properties of objects in your environment and dreaming up mischievous purposes for the keypresses that makes this kit so much fun.

Before you do anything, spend some time scrolling through our #makeymakeymonday series for a few ideas. We’ve done our best to collect all of the most interesting uses of the MaKey-MaKey that we could find, sharing them each Monday to inspire those approaching this fun inventors kit for the first time. Check out the list below for some suggestions culled from the series for things you might want to grab to do more with your MaKey-MaKey!

Available At Adafruit!

MaKey MaKey by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum – Made by JoyLabz: Here’s where you start! Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World. MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between. MaKey MaKey was invented by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum & Made by JoyLabz. Find out more details at makeymakey.com or watch the video. (read more)

Copper Foil Tape wth Conductive Adhesive – 25mm x 15 meter roll: Here’s a handy way to create a pad to “EARTH” on a table or other surface for operating your MaKey-MaKey! Plus, copper tape can be an interesting addition to your toolbox. The tape itself is made of thin pure copper so its extremely flexible and can take on nearly any shape. You can easily solder to it, and the tape itself can carry current just like a wire. On the back is an electrically conductive adhesive. The adhesive can’t carry significant current but it is very handy for sensing applications where you don’t want to solder the copper tape. (read more)

Conductive Fiber – Stainless Steel 20um – 10 grams: This solid stainless-steel conductive fiber is super interesting! It’s great for felting and could also be spun into yarn if that’s your thing. We tested many different fiber thicknesses for needle felting and found that this one (20um fiber thickness, 316L steel, straight fiber) is the most pleasurable to work with. Use about 0.2g of the stuff to make a felt touch button suitable for use with the MaKey MaKey or capacitive touch sensing circuit. Make felt controllers or felt buttons onto an existing wool sweater! (read more)

Pocket Autoranging Digital Multimeter: The pull ups on the MaKey-MaKey can trigger a key press even with a pretty high resistance, but that doesn’t mean you can trigger with a piece of brick (that isn’t wrapped in foil). The best way to test which fruit, vegetables, tin cups, cymbals, metal shelves etc have a low enough resistance for triggering is to have a multimeter in your pocket! When we’re on the go, we like to keep a multimeter in our purse and this model is by far the best pocket meter we’ve found. It’s so good you’ll end up using it as your main multimeter! First up, this meter can measure nearly everything: it’s got DC and AC voltage, resistance, diode, and beeping continuity test, capacitance, frequency, and current (both AC and DC in micro-Ampere and milli-Amp ranges.) There’s also an alkaline battery test – essentially a fixed range voltage test with a bigger drain to get a realistic load reading not just a floating voltage reading. And that’s not all! It’s also auto-ranging, has a data-hold button and turns itself off automatically after about 15 minutes to preserve the battery life. There’s a removable fuse inside for the current sensing side – cheaper meters have the fuse soldered in. (read more)

Premium Male/Male Jumper Wires – 40 x 12″ (300mm): For those looking to flip their MaKey-MaKey over to take advantage of the headers on the other side, grabbing a nice set of jumper wires is a quick and easy way to go from your MaKey-MaKey to a breadboard — or right to a custom connection you are making to a conductive substance. Use a little female socket and some copper tape to make a quick patching point on your MaKey-MaKey components. (read more)

Available Elsewhere!

Fruit, Vegetables, Legumes, Mushrooms, etc: Head to the grocery store, my friend, with your multimeter in tow! Making a banana piano is one of the iconic “first projects” usually attempted by MaKey-MaKey first time users. If anyone gives you a hard time — bring a Geiger counter and let them know you are the citizen inspector, there to inspect. (Or maybe don’t do this — what would you do with all of that radiation data you would collect? European readers will have less to worry about, I suspect.)

Play-Doh: Another MaKey-MaKey classic — Play-Doh game controller buttons and “squish circuits.” From the MaKey-MaKey How-To: “Play-Doh, Model Magic and other clays work very well as long as they stay moist.”

Glockenspiel / Xylophone kits: There are a number of kids toys and DIY carpentry kits out there to help you build simple mallet-based musical instruments. Well, when you can find uncoated/painted plates you have a great conductive surface to wire up for your MaKey-MaKey!

Junk Store Magic: Do you know what you get when you walk into one of those junk/antique stores with a multimeter and a couple of bucks in your pocket? Something strange and potentially inspiring that is also conductive in just the way you need it. Gifting a MaKey-MaKey and a strange tin toy might be the difference between a kid using a MaKey-MaKey solely to play Canabalt and coming up with a unique interactive invention.

Mod Podge: Mod Podge is the most popular brand a type of “modge podge” non-toxic glue+sealer+glossy finish substance used by millions of children and crafters to shellac various bits of stamps, paper, etc onto wood, clay ornaments, etc.. While I have been focusing on conductive treats for your MaKey-MaKey fun, it is actually going to be the use of substances like Mod Podge to seal over (comfortably for your hands and for your brain as it harmlessly air dries) the parts that you want to NOT conduct. Inventive uses this plus Play-Doh or other wet malleable clay substances — and the use of ground graphite to turn some of the clay into a very conductive (for MaKey-MaKey) traces — is an excellent way to make a squish-circuit that is easier for younger kids to operate without bridging across all of your hard routing work.

Plaster of Paris and paper mâché: There are hundreds of air-setting clays and powders that you can consider for bulking out the volume of a MaKey-MaKey invention — but plaster of paris and paper-mâché are classics that tend to be easy to work with. Unlike with the Play-Doh and other “wet”/moist clays that you might want to use to conduct electricity, you can use these substances to build the parts that do not conduct. Make sure to leave time for these to dry thoroughly — and consider sealing them over if you are going to apply moist clays to the surface (or these substances will wick all of the moisture out of what you need kept wet).

PlastiDip: This stuff is pretty amazing, though do not let kids loose with the stuff as it tends to stick around for a few decades. This is a great choice if you are looking to insulate part of a metal rod or plate for easier handling — or to take a wild and wooly experimental project and clean it up to be nice and compact, with all of the conductive bits nicely separated from each other. Also a great way to turn parts of a rough wooden box into a gentle container for a fragile project.

Every Monday is Makey Makey™ Monday here at Adafruit! The MaKey MaKey – by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, made by JoyLabz! Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World. MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Find out more details at makeymakey.com or watch the video at makeymakey.com. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between! If you have a cool project you’ve made with your Makey Makey be sure to send it in to be featured here!

Electronics:

Adafruit Gift Certificates:  Our gift certificates cover everything with one fell swoop:  From Arduino to RaspberryPi, from a coloring book to a soldering device, we’ve got you covered.

Github Pro Account:  What’s better than a private repository at Github?  Share what you love, just with your friends!  A little paid exclusivity goes a long way.  Our favorite way to share code can also be gifted! You can sponsor paid GitHub accounts for all the hard workers contributing to open source projects. What a great idea!

MakerShed Gift Certificate:  The go-to place for your d0-it-yourselfer-crafter-nerd-tech-genius friends and loved ones!  Can’t decide what to gift? Give them a gift certificate good for anything from the Maker Shed with the amount you choose. And best yet, you can choose to email it to them and avoid those long postal deliveries (Recommended). A great last minute present that could spark a lifetime of making!

SparkFun Electronics:  The best source for red boards online.  SparkFun Gift Certificates are entirely virtual. Enter the amount you wish to purchase on this page and add it to your cart. Once you’ve placed your order and your payment has been confirmed, the Gift Certificate money is yours to distribute as you see fit.

Trossen Robotics:  The go-to robotics website.

Photography:

B&H Gift Card:  B&H has long been the go-to source for professional grade photography equipment.  Give this card to a loved one and let ‘em loose like a kid in a candy store.

Online Photography Seminars at kelbytraining.com:  Scott Kelby is a commercial photographer who has branched out into tutorials and education, and the guy knows his stuff.  His website offers online tutorials as well as DVDs and books.  So give your loved ones something they can never lose — an education.  The online seminars cover all aspects of commercial image-capture, from basic photography to Adobe Lightroom^® tutorials,  to business management for photographers to nature and storm photography.  For the professional or serious enthusiast, consider a subscription to all the tutorials, for $24.99/month or $199/year.

Foliobook:  iPad Portfolio App:  This is an easy, inexpensive gift for your photo friends, especially those trying to establish credentials as a photography enthusiast…give them this and they can instantly start building an online guide to their best works!

Snapseed App for iPad and iPhone:  This app allows an array of editing options for photos taken with iPad and iPhone and Androids too!

Other Miscellaneous Fun:

Moo Gift Cards:  Business cards, greeting cards, anything you want!  And you get to pick from a snappy, modern moo graphic for the announcement e-mail too.

United Nuclear Gift Certificates:  Looking for some uranium to put under the tree for that special someone?  This website has a cornucopia of everything fun under the sun.

The ArduPilot Mega 2.5 – is a complete open source autopilot system and the bestselling technology that won the prestigious 2012 Outback Challenge UAV competition. This version is ready to use, with no assembly required. It allows the user to turn any fixed, rotary wing or multirotor vehicle (even cars and boats) into a fully autonomous vehicle; capable of performing programmed GPS missions with waypoints.

ELEV-8 Quadcopter Kit – The ELEV-8 quadcopter is a flying robotic platform that is lifted and propelled by four fixed rotors. There are no fixed wings; all of the lift is created from the rotors. Unlike standard helicopters a quadcopter uses fixed-pitch blades, whose rotor pitch does not vary as the blades rotate; control of vehicle motion is achieved by varying the relative speed of each rotor to change the thrust and torque produced by each. The quadcopter uses a HoverFly board with a Propeller multicore microprocessor to electronically control stabilization of the aircraft. The benefits to this system are a stable platform, with no mechanical linkages for a small maneuverable and agile aircraft.

Arduplane-AP-X Foam Plane with APM2.5 – This is the first fixed-wing UAV solution from Udrones. Combine the best-selling APM 2.5 autopilot with a reliable 4 channel tough foam airplane, and you’ll get the best fully autonomous and ready to fly UAV bird of its kind. It comes with the best-selling ArduPilot Mega UAV autopilot board and IMU shield, GPS module for navigation and an airspeed sensor. Free upgrade to a stronger and faster 2700Kv motor for a killer ride. Also includes the cables you need to connect your R/C receiver, and the USB cable for connecting to the Mission Planer software. The most recent ArduPlane software is pre-loaded and all sensors and functions are tested.

Educational Mini UAVs- Skill Badge, Iron-On Patch – You built an educational mini UAV! Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.  Also, be sure to check out the high-altitude balloon patch!

Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout – If you are planning a high altitude balloon launch, or tracking your drone, this is the GPS device you need.  The breakout is built around the MTK3339 chipset, a no-nonsense, high-quality GPS module that can track up to 22 satellites on 66 channels, has an excellent high-sensitivity receiver (-165 dB tracking!), and a built in antenna. It can do up to 10 location updates a second for high speed, high sensitivity logging or tracking. Power usage is incredibly low, only 20 mA during navigation. We’ve tested this version of the Ultimate GPS in a high-altitude balloon, and it kept fix up to 27km!

Sky-Probe Complete High Altitude Launch Kit – Everything you need to get started with your own launch, minus helium. This kit is designed to be lightweight yet rigid enough to mount experiments inside or outside. The launch box is designed to be modular, you can add extra poles for multiple viewing platforms or other experiments. The foam inside the box is pre-scored, you just pull out what you don’t need to fit your electronics. You simply can’t find a more complete and inexpensive launch kit.

Compressed Air Rockets Kit – For the future rocket scientist! Developed by teacher and maker Rick Schertle, and based on his popular Compressed Air Rocket project from MAKE Volume 15, this kit is a fun way to introduce science concepts, basic soldering, and electronics to a youngster or a classroom. Building the kit is a breeze and people are amazed that paper rockets can reach 200–300 feet in the air.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 –  There is no guarantee that UPS Ground packages will arrive in time for Christmas.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

And there is a little treat for you at the end. It is with great pleasure and satisfaction that I bring your the first roll call of “Adafruit Music Industries“: i.e. the actual musicians, performers, and composers here at Adafruit. Aren’t you curious now? Feel free to scroll to the end to check them out.

Available At Adafruit!

Music & sound add-on pack for Arduino – v1.1: Its a Wave shield party pack! Just add an Arduino to create your own iPod-killer, audio art, sound-effects box… Comes with the latest Wave shield kit, works with more SD cards and with older NG Arduinos! Unassembled 1 or 2 GB SD card (brand or size may change, but we test one of each kind to verify it works well). Speaker – 3″ diameter (77mm), 8 ohm impedence, good response between 200Hz to 10KHz (10KHz is the max frequency the Wave shield can make). The speaker is rated for 1W so if you want you can even stick a small amp between the shield and the speaker to boost up the volume. (read more)

Electret Microphone Amplifier – MAX4466 with Adjustable Gain: Add an ear to your project with this well-designed electret microphone amplifier. This fully assembled and tested board comes with a 20-20KHz electret microphone soldered on. For the amplification, we use the Maxim MAX4466, an op-amp specifically designed for this delicate task! The amplifier has excellent power supply noise rejection, so this amplifier sounds really good and isn’t nearly as noisy or scratchy as other mic amp breakouts we’ve tried! This breakout is best used for projects such as voice changers, audio recording/sampling, and audio-reactive projects that use FFT. On the back, we include a small trimmer pot to adjust the gain. You can set the gain from 25x to 125x. That’s down to be about 200mVpp (for normal speaking volume about 6″ away) which is good for attaching to something that expects ‘line level’ input without clipping, or up to about 1Vpp, ideal for reading from a microcontroller ADC. The output is rail-to-rail so if the sounds gets loud, the output can go up to 5Vpp! (read more)

Adafruit Learning System: there are a number of excellent tutorials for those wishing to trigger sounds or master Arduino of Raspberry Pi in the Adafruit Learning System, including the useful video above demonstrating how to trigger sounds using bottoms and a RasPi and the video below from showing how you can use the Wave Shield to create a voice changer. Hunt for your topic there to see what you find! (read more)

MaKey MaKey by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum – Made by JoyLabz: Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World. MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between. MaKey MaKey was invented by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum & Made by JoyLabz. Find out more details at makeymakey.com or watch the video. (read more)

Drawdio Kit: Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! It’s great project for beginners: An easy soldering kit with instant gratification. Essentially, it’s a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you draw musical instruments on any piece of paper. (read more)

Kits from Another Planet!!

Music From Outer Space catalog: Okay, this isn’t just one product, it is a lifestyle. This site is a good litmus test to see if you are susceptible to the temptations of analog audio gear or not. And what’s more, there is a density to the site and what it offers that it practically teaches you electronics just through the process of puzzling out how to find all of the interesting corners. Navigating the site successfully should permit you to at least produce a saw wave on an analog synth. Or at least master some basic signal processing. But you know you want to dip your feet in the water and put together the Noise Toaster or Weird Sound Generator or at least some outboard signal processing gear. If you are getting as excited as I am about this stuff, then you have passed the test this site represents and will now proceed to fill your apartment with rack gear cast off from the local radio station fire sale, because someday, you just might need that particular sound it makes. (read more)

Tap-Tempo Metronome Kit: Very useful tool for musicians! “The Tap-Tempo Metronome is a tap-controlled or tap-tempo metronome and beat looper. You tap the piezo speaker to set the rhythm. The display shows the beats per minute, and the two buttons adjust the speed. You can tap patterns into it, up to 12 beats long. As long as you tap the pattern in three times, it jumps in and continues beeping in that rhythm. If you hold one of the buttons while turning the metronome on, the pitch of the beep will be higher or lower, so you can play with more than one at a time.” (read more)

Make12 – Solar Xylophone: Here’s a really great kit that started as a project at MAKE, offered by Solarbotics. “Want to build the Solar Xylophone in Make Volume 12? \We carry pretty much all of the electronic parts you need to build the Solar Xylophone by Rory Nugent in Make Volume 12. So, to save you a ton of time trying to find all of those many parts (and adding 8 of each!) we have compiled them all into one very convenient bundle.” (read more)

GetLoFi electronics projects: The above image is for the awesome 2399 LoFi Delay, but there are quite a few awesome audio kits here to consider, from Optical Transistor Theremin Kit to Distortion Lab to Atari Punk Console 3.0 Kit. (read more)

PAiA Theremax Theremin: One of the best places to get Theremin kits and unusual sound modules. From the Theremax Theremin description: “Since its introduction during the 1920′s the instrument which bears Leon Theremin’s name has been evocative in image and tone. PAiA’s Theremax theremin captures this spirit in an instrument based on the same heterodyne principles as the original but with embellishments made possible by the economy of integrated circuits and solid state electronics. In addition to the traditional mellow sine-like tone, Theremax’s Timbre control can mix in a harmonic rich square wave to produce a signal that’s ideal for use with external filters and processors. And to control outboard units, there are Pitch and Volume Control Voltage outputs. But the features that really set Tmax apart as a gestural controller are it’s Velocity Control Voltage (proportional to how fast you increase the Volume) and Gate/Trigger outputs. A convenient foot switch input allows muting the internal tone source without disabling the CVs.(read more)

And here are a few more synth and PCB links for the enterprising — fewer photos or guarantees to deliver anytime soon than the options above. But AWESOME when you figure out what each site is offering.

• http://www.cgs.synth.net/: Huge variety of pcbs from a very strange pony breeder.
• http://bridechamber.com/Home.html: Another good resource for pcbs, and some rare hard to find components.
• http://erthenvar.com/store/index.php?route=comm: Another good diy resource.
• http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=17: Music tech diy thread on modular forum muffwiggler.com -
  lots of small runs of pcbs, faceplates and a good general resource for modular diy info.

Chiptunes!!

Nanoloop: One of the two giants of the chip tunes scene! From the website: “Nanoloop is a minimalistic electronic music program for handheld platforms. Nanoloop 1.6 is a sequencer for Game Boy. Sound is generated by the Game Boy’s analog sound chip and restricted to raw rectangular waves, noise and a 4-bit wave form. Nanoloop 2.5 for Game Boy Advance is a sequencer and software synthesizer. Filtered waves, filtered noise and simple FM are produced digitally. The iPhone and Android versions share the same sound engine and file format and have a similar interface. They combine an enhanced version of nanoloop 2.5′s synthesizer with a simple sampler. Both allow to record audio on the device and to import samples via PC. They also can re-sample their own sound output.” There is also a GBA version, below. (read more)

Little Sound DJ (LSDJ): The other titan of the chip tunes scene, as dominated by people leaping about the stage hunched over Game Boys. Quite different approach than nanoloops — and each platform has its fans and foes. From the site: “The basic idea is to transform a plain Game Boy/Game Boy Color into a full-fledged music workstation.

• Sequencer: The sequencer of Little Sound Dj has a very open structure. It was designed to leave all the musical possibilities of the Gameboy in the hands of the user. The system can be said to be both simple and complex; it has a slight learning curve, but when learned, it is possible to transcribe a complete Bach piece to it on less than one hour.
• Sound: The Gameboy sound chip offers four channels with 4-bit sound. Custom waveforms can be created by free-hand drawing, or by using a subtractive synthesizer with resonant filters. For extra versatility, Little Sound Dj also contains a quite powerful arpeggiator, which possibilities go far beyond the classic C64-style chords.
• Samples: Sample-wise, Little Sound Dj boasts a set of 59 phonems for programmable speech. Besides that, it also features drum kits sampled from machines TR-606, TR-707, TR-727, TR-808, TR-909, CR-78, CR-8000, KR-55, DR-55, DR-110, DMX, Drumulator, RhythmAce, TOM and LinnDrum.
• Synchronization: It is possible to use a link cable to sync two Game Boys; great for party fun or for added polyphony! If you want to, you can sync LSDJ with Nanoloop. MIDI sync is possible too, if you are ready to build your own LSDj Midi Interface.”

(read more)

GREIGHTBIT.COM: Get yer circuit bent and gameboy modification projects here. Some really interesting projects from introductory models to tremendously modded systems for many many times more. (read more)

Drag’N'Derp: Professor Abrasive has launched his own cart that sounds quite different than the others. I grabbed this from his FAQ: “Why make another cart? There are a bunch of carts on the market, but for making music, I’m not really happy with any of them – needing something that is reliable, and simple. Some require an external programmer/reader. These are vulnerable to bad connections; since there are no checksums on save memory, there’s no way to tell if your data has been silently corrupted. Many carts have instead a programmer built in, using USB. One thing these all have in common is that they require custom software and drivers to be installed, which is a lot of fiddling, and gets very complicated if you’re not on Windows. Why isn’t it bigger, faster, cheaper…? This cart was designed with a particular use case in mind – making music. The design aesthetic I have employed is to make the hardware as simple and reliable as possible. It does one job only; I have resisted the tendencies to pack in features. Simplicity is the aim of every design choice; even the PCB is laid out on two layers, where for this density a modern engineer would usually go straight for 4.
(read more)

MeeBlip SE: From the website: “MeeBlip is designed to be useful when connected to other tools. It doesn’t take much – even an inexpensive Rock Band “keytar” keyboard controller, now available for not much more than US$50, will let you play. Here, we meet some of Peter’s Berlin neighbors, the fine folks at boutique analog hardware maker Koma Elektronik. Their analog delay in particular sounds terrific with MeeBlip’s own unique sound. And for MIDI, we turn to the brilliant step sequencer for iPad, Phaedra.
This is one example. But any number of MIDI sources and effects will work – iPad owners, all you need is a MIDI connection, typically a supported USB MIDI interface and Apple’s own USB Camera Connection Kit. (iOSMIDI.com will help you find what you need.) (read more)

Chipsounds: An incredible software project to properly emulate vintage game music synths. From the website: “This software synth turns your VST, AU or RTAS host into a classic video game console, vintage 8-bit home computer and even an 80′s arcade. Plogue chipsounds authentically emulates 15 vintage 8-bit era sound chips (on top of their variants), down to their smallest idiosyncrasies. But more interestingly, it also faithfully allows you to dynamically reproduce the accidentally discovered sounds effect tricks and abusive musical techniques that were made famous by innovative chip music composers and classic video game sound designers, which for the good part of the last 3 decades, have pushed beyond the boundaries of the original chip designs. In short, whether you are already versed into chiptune/chip music or just interested in those sounds, this is one unique instrument for you!” (read more)

SEGA Master System 1 console sounds (Little-Scale): “Crystal-clear sounds recorded from a SEGA Master System 1 console. All notes for the pulse channel, all noise sounds and all timed bass sounds for noise. All at 192KHz / 24bit. Royalty free, copyright free, license free, restriction free. http://milkcrate.com.au/_other/downloads/sample_sets/SEGA_Master_System_Pristine_Samples.zip.” (read more)

X-Mini II Capsule Speaker: From the manufacturers description: “The X-mini II Capsule Speaker is a portable capsule speaker that delivers a superb audio effects with advanced sound technologies. The compact and robust design promises easy portability with an outstanding performance over years.” But I trust co-worker James’ description better: “I’ve found these portable speakers from amazon perfect for adding audio to a RasPi, since they are powered/charge off usb.”(read more)

Boombox Tshirt (minusbaby): In the words of the shirt’s designer, minusbaby of monobomb: “Necessary to wear when you write music.” I agree! And thanks to minusbaby for sending me a number of the above chiptunes tech suggestions!

Adafruit MUSIC Industries!

As tends to happen at a tech startup in New York, there are quite a few musically inclined people on staff. In fact, several of us (myself included) are in this tech world in the first places because of our early exposure to guitar pedals, synths, and audio production routing. So here is the run down of the most active music projects in the bunch, written up for you pretty much as they described and named themselves, so that you can hear for yourself the great and glorious sounds of these makers — when they aren’t producing mostly racket by rushing about a warehouse sending out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lovingly gathered, built, kitted, and shipped packages of Adafruit invention tools to the world.

• Bateman & Tom play in Frog.
• Chances are, if you have seen a video Becky, myself, or others at Adafruit have made, you have been hearing the great work of Tom from his Bartlebeats project!
• James plays in Anamanaguchi. (I’m a bit star-struck.)
• Kris does original orchestral arrangements for songwriters in a live music video series called “Mason Jar Music Presents…“, and sings with Khorikos.
• Here’s Jordan’s site.
• Baken makes music with George and Jonathan.
• Nick does Speculator and Cool Angels.
• Stefan is in Town Hall.
• Ian Davis is in Relatives.
• Ross plays in Father Figures.
• And Brian, who put together most of this list for me, has just started a record label with Bateman to release music that he, Bateman and friends have been producing: sadly they haven’t launched their site yet for this posting.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 –  There is no guarantee that UPS Ground packages will arrive in time for Christmas.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

IOIO Mint – Portable Android Development Kit – IOIO (pronounced “yo-yo”) is a bridge between Android devices and external hardware such as sensors and servos. IOIO enables you to add the computational power, touch display, connectivity, and built-in sensors (camera, GPS, accelerometer) of Android to your projects. IOIO can connect to any standard Android device (as early as Android 1.5) over both USB and Bluetooth. Here’s a few IOIO projects which will give you an idea of what you can do with IOIO.

Arduino Mega R3 Android Accessory Development Kit (ADK) Board – Fast track your Android phone hardware development or just design cell-phone robots with the Arduino ADK! The Arduino ADK is a microcontroller board based on the powerful ATmega2560 (datasheet). It has a USB host interface to connect with Android based phones, and a power supply boost converter to charge up the phone from DC power while its plugged into the ADK.

Android – Skill Badge, Iron-On Patch – You hacked, modded or made something with Android! Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.

Making Android Accessories with IOIO by Simon Monk – Create your own electronic devices with the popular IOIO (“yoyo”) board, and control them with your Android phone or tablet. With this concise guide, you’ll get started by building four example projects—after that, the possibilities for making your own fun and creative accessories with Android and IOIO are endless.

Kiwi Bluetooth Android Phone Car Diagnostic Kit – The Kiwi Bluetooth is a plug and play wireless device that connects to your car’s OBDII port (right below the steering wheel). Kiwi Bluetooth comes attached with a 6 ft OBDII cable for easy installation. It also comes with a power switch built-in to prevent the need for having to constantly disconnect your unit from the OBDII port. You can use it in any vehicle born in 1996 or later, whether it’s a sedan, truck, SUV, or even a hybrid. Once the device is connected, you can download one of two recommended car diagnostics apps from the Android Market and begin to monitor all sorts of stats about your car.

Arduino + Android Projects for the Evil Genius by Simon Monk – Filled with practical, do-it-yourself gadgets, Arduino + Android Projects for the Evil Genius shows you how to create Arduino devices and control them with Android smartphones and tablets. Easy-to-find equipment and components are used for all the projects in the book, making projects for feasible for any Arduino / Android enthusiast.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 –  There is no guarantee that UPS Ground packages will arrive in time for Christmas.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Voltaic Systems Medium 6V 2W & Large 6V 3.4W Solar Panels – These panels come to us from Voltaic Systems, makers of fine solar-powered bags and packs. These are waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. They use a high efficiency monocrystalline cell. They output 6V at 330 mA & 550 mA via 3.5mm x 1.3mm DC jack connectors. The substrate is an aluminum / plastic composite, specifically designed to be strong and lightweight. They can easily stand up to typical outdoor use including being dropped and leaned on. They’re very high quality and suggested for projects that will be exposed to the outdoors.  Adafruit also carries a smaller 6V 1W panel, and a larger  6V 3.7W panel.

USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger – Take those awesome solar panels and put them to work. Make your projects go green this summer with our specialized USB/Solar Lithium Ion Polymer Battery charger! This charger is a very unique design, perfect for outdoor projects, or DIY iPod chargers. We’ve spent over a year testing and tinkering with this charger to come up with a plug and play solution to charging batteries with the sun.

Snap Circuits® Green – Learn about energy sources and how to “think green”. Build over 125 projects and learning about environmentally friendly energy and how electricity works. Includes full-colored manual with over 100 pages and separate educational manual. Features-Hand Crank-Solar Cell-FM Radio-Energy Compartment-Rechargeable Battery-Windmill-Clock and Analog Meter. Compatible with the Snap Circuits family of electronic learning kits.

Solarbotics Zendulum – The Zendulum is a do-it-yourself, simple solderable kit. It features a spherical neodymium rare earth magnet, which emulates Newton’s cradle when infrared irradiation is applied. In English? There’s a magnetic ball that rolls back and forth when powered by a solar cell. Assemble the kit and let it live on your table or windowsill – a simple desk lamp or sunlight can provide enough juice. When powered, the ball will seemingly roll back and forth on it’s own, almost as if it’s throwing the laws of physics and gravity to the wind.

Solarbotics PumLantern Kit – a solar-charged, night-time activated light-pulsing lantern. This kit charges all day from the SCC3733 solar cell, and pumms the four ultra-mega-super-bright LEDs to cast artistic silhouettes against the walls of the lantern. The LEDs themselves are a random grab of white, blue, red, orange and green.

Thames and Kosmos Physics Solar Workshop – Physics Solar Workshop explores the topic of solar energy, focusing on photovoltaic cells. By building 12 models and conducting 30 experiments, you will learn how solar cells transform light into electrical energy, and how motors and mechanical devices can optimize the work done by this energy. You will build different types of vehicles and machines to demonstrate how gears can convert and transform power for different needs.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – No guarantee that your package will arrive for Christmas.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

How are you going to get out the door, much less to the helicopter waiting to airlift you to Florida with a table full of breadboards and hookup wire? “You’ve got to put it in a case, son, you’ve got to kit it right up.” Here are some great enclosures from Adafruit and beyond!

Available At Adafruit!

These new Pibow cases just arrived and they have been very popular. The Pibow is a durable and fun case for the Raspberry Pi® computer that is perfectly in touch with the ethos of the Raspberry Pi. The case is crafted out of seven layers with a transparent top and base. Each layer is laser cut from high-quality cast acrylic and once stacked they securely contain a Raspberry Pi while leaving the primary ports accessible. (read more)

Large Plastic Project Enclosure – Weatherproof with Clear Top: Store your project safe and sound in this nice weatherproof box with a clear top. We picked up this box because we like the machinable ABS plastic body and tough clear polycarbonate cover, the built in weatherproof gasket seal, and the easy-open screws that can be taken apart as many times as you wish without worrying about cracking or stripping. (read more)

Bi-Fold Compartment Parts Box: In addition to building your projects into a box or enclosure, you need a place to store the components and replacement parts for keeping your projects running — or starting to build a new one! This handy box has outer dimensions of 6.25″ x 3.5″ (159mm x 89mm) – 4.1″ including hinges (104mm), long compartments are 3.35″ x 1.15″ (85 x 29mm) and for short compartments are 1.65″ x 1.15″ (42 x 29mm). Perfect for small parts and more! We tested dozens of other latching lid boxes, this is the best one. This box is NOT anti-static, but you can use foam or anti-static bags inside if needed. (read more)

Medium waterproof OtterBox – 2000: Make your project stand up to serious abuse with an otterbox, a true waterproof drybox that is also tough enough to get run over. Made of clear polycarbonate, you’ll be able to keep an eye on any indicator LEDs. We have these in 3 sizes: small (#1000), medium (#2000) and large (#3000). They’re ideal for projects with wireless components like GPS loggers, GPRS/GSM cellular or xbee but can also act as a portable “pack & hack” project box. Comes with a lanyard and there are slots on the side for strapping the box onto something. Its a tough box so it will be hard to drill into it. (read more)

Altoids Gum sized tin: Ever since Altoids discontinued the Gum version, its been hard to get tins. So we went and got a whole mess of them custom made! These tins are exactly the same shape and size as the old Altoids gum tins but they are blank and we got the bottom flattened instead of rounded (so it fits things better). (read more)

Pi Holder milled aluminum case for Raspberry Pi: For those who are very serious about protecting their Raspberry Pi, check out this gorgeous and indestructible Raspberry Pi™ Case. It is as awesome as it is functional. Made in the U.S.A. by Barch Designs from Solid 6061-T6 Aircraft Grade Billet Aluminum which protects your Raspberry Pi from damage and also keeps your Pi running extra-cool by acting as a thermal heat sink. (read more)

Available Elsewhere!

RadioShack Project Enclosures: Next to the beautiful Rainbow PiBox cases, the Radio Shack enclosures can look a little dull — but there are many times that being dull, nondescript, and sturdy go a very long way! Mount a project to a park bench, up under desk, or nestle it into the crook of a branch in a tree — these enclosures can take it. (read more)

Cubify 3D Printed Photo iPhone Cases: Cubify has just started to offer a service by which you can upload a photo to their web tool and get back a 3D printed “sculptural” phone case. And they are offering 15% off their FreshFiber phone cases. With all of the iOS and Android projects out there — consider having a custom case that relates to the app you are prepared to show off! (read more)

The Folding Arduino Lab from jasonwelsh on Thingiverse: What better way to create just the enclosure you need than to design it and 3D print it? Jasonwelsh’s project takes this idea one step further by considering the variety of his needs for his project box — and making a set of modular parts to build a box to suit all of his Arduino project needs. (read more)

Small Ball & Puck Display Cubes: Here’s an awesome tip from Becky — the Container Store has a bunch of small pre-built clear boxes that might well fit your intended project perfectly. The sports memorabilia boxes such as these ball and puck cases are particularly useful — and I saw a number of costumes at New York Comic Con that took advantage of these. (You can frost the inside of the baseball case and fill it with LEDs for a nice glowing cube effect, for example.) (read more)

LEGO project enclosure: How does the expression go? “If it’s worth building, it’s worth building with LEGOs?” For sturdiness and customization, what could be better than designing your own enclosure using a LEGO construction set. If you argue that a LEGO case isn’t classy enough for you, I would argue that you are going to the wrong sort of parties. (read more)

MAKE covered a bunch of interesting project enclosures and included this tip: “Your fancy project box deserves better than a plain ol’ plastic wall-wart. Off-the-shelf, your options are black, white, and beige. Fortunately, we know somebody who’s been there, feels your pain, and wants to show you how to class up your power supply with a custom wooden shell and matching cord.” (read more)

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Aluminum iPhone 4S 0.8mm 5-Point Star/Pentalobe Screwdriver - We tried half a dozen different 5-point star/”pentalobe” screwdriver tools to find the one we liked the most The body is made from a single piece of aluminum and has nice knurled grips. The end-cap rotates so you can keep the body steady while rotating. The tip is nicely machined and is magnetic so it holds the miniscule screws in place while inserting/removing them.  Get the iPhone 4 version here.

Clear No-Logo iPhone Replacement Back – iPhone 4S - Turn your iPhone 4S invisible! OK well maybe not invisible, but with this clear back you can gaze deeply into the inner works of the iPhone – great for when you want a geeky cyber-look or want to place a visible RFID tag inside the phone. This kit comes with a clear plastic back and two basic screwdrivers (one pentalobe, one phillips – use whichever your phone has) to remove the back and replace it. Get the iPhone 4 version here.

iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino by Alasdair Allan - Turn your iPhone or iPad into the hub of a distributed sensor network with the help of an Arduino microcontroller. With this concise guide, you’ll learn how to connect an external sensor to an iOS device and have them talk to each other through Arduino. You’ll also build an iOS application that will parse the sensor values it receives and plot the resulting measurements, all in real-time.

DIY Stitchable iPhone 4 & 4s Case – Individualize your iPhone 4 or 4s with this crafty, stitch-able protective case. The perforated cover (choose from black or white) allows you to cross stitch your own designs to create a one-of-a-kind fashion item. The kit includes 3 different colors of embroidery floss (you can get more colors from craft stores), a needle, and a few design ideas to get you started.

Redpark TTL Cable for iOS – The Redpark TTL Cable for iOS is the latest revision of the popular RedPark Serial Cable. The main difference between this and the original is that a RS-232 serial to TTL adapter is no longer required. This means you can connect it directly to an Arduino using only jumper wires. No soldering and no adapters required.

The RedPark cable is the first and only cable approved by Apple to allow hobbyists to connect their iOS devices to external microcontrollers and sensors! With this cable, you can open up your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and let your imagination run wild! Use external sensors in your iOS apps! Talk to an Arduino with your iPhone! The possibilities are unlimited!

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Sparkle Labs’ inspire and create gift list 2012 @ learnSparkle.

This year we thought we would highlight some of the great and smart gifts out there from
many of our retailers and friends! We tried to focus on gifts that inspire people to create and learn but mostly it is a list of stuff that we would want!

Drawdio Kit ($17.50) - Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! It’s great project for beginners: An easy soldering kit with instant gratification. Essentially, it’s a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you draw musical instruments on any piece of paper.

Programming Arduino by Simon Monk ($15.00) - Using clear, easy-to-follow examples, Programming Arduino: Getting Started with Sketches reveals the software side of Arduino and explains how to write well-crafted sketches using the modified C language of Arduino. No prior programming experience is required! The downloadable sample programs featured in the book can be used as-is or modified to suit your purposes.

Magnetic Project Mat ($12.95) - Repairs can be tough. You don’t need missing screws making it worse. iFixit designed this mat to make repairs easier. You won’t lose screws and won’t forget which screws go where.  This project mat is magnetized to hold tight onto small screws, has a dry erase surface lets you keep notes and stops mistakes, it reduces reassembly time by up to 40% while preventing errors, and the magnetic surface is safe for hard drives, and other modern electronics.

EL Wire Starter Pack ($19.95) - A little bundle to get you started! This project pack contains:

• 2.5 meters (over 8 ft) of high-brightness, long-life EL wire in Aqua, the brightest and best looking EL color we carry. 2.5 meters is the maximum amount for the pocket driver – it’s cut and soldered and ready to go!
• Pocket EL inverter runs on 2 AA Alkaline or rechargeable batteries (not included)
• 2 inches of heat shink, both 1/8″ and 1/4″ for protecting the EL wire after soldering in case you want to change it later
• 2 inches of copper tape, used when soldering EL wire
• 2 inches of foam tape, we use this to pad the inside of the inverter to quiet it down

We used this to make our awesome TRON bag!

SMT Blinky POV Kit ($15) – Learn how to solder SMT components with this great kit from Wayne & Layne. Wave messages and animations through the air with this persistance-of-vision toy. Reprogram custom messages or animations by holding it up to your screen! It has 8 LEDs, a beautiful Larson Scanner mode, and is a standalone, surface-mount kit.

The Deluxe LED Menorah Kit ($13.95) – This great little LED Menorah kit from Evil Mad Science Labs is an updated take on the traditional hanukkiyah, the nine-armed Hanukkah candelabrum. Two candles are lit on the first night of Hanukkah (one “real” candle plus the lighter candle, or shamash), three on the second night, right up to nine on the eighth night.

Blinky Laser Cut Holiday Tree Ornaments ($9.95) – These are basic easy-to-build electronics kits from Spikenzie Labs. Built around laser cut and etched acrylic the snowman or holiday tree really catch the light! Sized at about 3″ wide, by 5″ tall, the snowman or holiday tree is edge-lit by 10mm flashing green and red LEDs. Comes as a kit that is very easy to solder, CR2032 battery included. The PCB is a simple RC circuit. Two LEDs one 10mm green and one red LEDs flash in an alternating pattern. Helps understand some electronics fundamentals, and a lot of fun to solder.  Click here for the holiday tree version.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Clocks have always been popular DIY projects, whether here at Adafruit or from many of the other great people out there in the open source HW community.  Looking for something practical and fun for that special someone this non-descript winter-themed holiday season?  Here’s our guide to some of our favorite hackable open source clocks and watches!

 TIMESQUARE

It’s sleek, it’s distinctive, it’s affordable and it’s got a great name: TIMESQUARE!  If you’re looking for a bit of portable geekery, you can’t go wrong with this kit.  Added bonus?  It’s a great way to teach someone how to solder with a working reward at the end of it!

Alpha Clock Five

You’ll know what time it is from clean across the room factory floor with this well-engineered bit of LED glory: Evil Mad Scientist Lab’s Alpha Clock Five!  It has 2.3″ characters, a high precision RTC, a rear panel LED backlight (it’s the details that matter, after all), and it’s available right here at Adafruit or direct from EMSL.

Ice Tube Clock Kit

Wake up every morning with this pinnacle of Russian technology glowing beside you, and you’ll be saying доброе утро (dough-bro-ye oo-tro) in no time!  Made with real Russian tubes, gets these wonderfully hackable clocks while they last since once the factory is emptied of it’s communist-era know-how, there won’t be anymore of these available! Ice Tube Clock from Adafruit.

Bulb Dial Clock

You know who figured out how to make cool clocks way before the Russians with their nixie tubes?  The Babylonians!  When they weren’t busy crushing and conquering anyone who looked at them the wrong way, they were busy chillaxing in their hanging gardens telling time on their sundials.  In a bit of Ancient Ur meets California, the Bulbdial Clock Kit from Evil Mad Scientist Labs — get the feeling there’s some light-hearted sibling rivalry here in the clock department? — is a modern take on a classic invention: It works like an indoor sundial, but with three shadows of different length. You tell the time just like you do on a normal clock, by reading the positions of the hour, minute, and second hands.

Monochron!

With a sleek enclosure designed by Woz, this fun kit is supremely hackable with a 128×64 graphic LCD and an easy to program ATMega328 processor.  Ready for your next soldering and programming challenge?   This is a great kit to step it up a notch and get creative designing your own clock!

ClockOS

Looking for a sleek basis for your own custom clock project?  Have a look at the open source ClockOS!  You can see one iteration of this clock in the header of this guide … I’d be curious to hear from anyone whose tried it out themselves!

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Mechanical Sourcebooks:

From left to right:

• Mechanisms and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook, 5th Edition by Neil Sclater
• 1800 Mechanical Movements, Devices and Appliances by Gerdner Hiscox
• 507 Mechanical Movements by Henry Brown

The first book, the Mechanisms and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook, is a like an encyclopedia of mechanics, with explanations of how various linkages and simple machines work, and what they can be used for. Neil Sclater does a great job breaking down advanced engineering concepts into easy-to-understand language.

The other two books are compendiums of various mechanisms used in all sorts of machinery and hardware. They’re not textbooks, exactly, just collections of mechanical drawings with occasional notes. They’re great for inspiring new designs and ideas. Figuring out how these mechanisms work (and how they can be made) is a lot of fun! Many of the drawings are quite beautiful too!

Age: while all ages can enjoy the images in these books, younger children may need someone older to help them understand the concepts.

Compass Drawings: Construction Designs Using a Compass and a Ruler (Grades 4-6) by Linda Harst

I’ve always been terrible at freehand drawing — still am, in fact. Then one day I discovered my dad’s college technical drawing books. While these were geared towards professional drafting, my favorite parts were the pictures at the beginining that described various geometric construction techniques. Drawing with geometric construction is a good way to improve spatial reasoning, and the results can be quite beautiful.

This book focuses on teaching those techniques, with the goal being to create beautiful mandala-like pictures, suitable for the finest refridgerators.

While explicitly stated to be for grades 4-6, I’d suggest this is an all-ages book, with help and supervision recommended for younger children (watch out for those pointy compass needles!)

The Leviathan Trilogy, by Scott Westerfeld. Illustrated by Keith Thompson.

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series follows the adventures of Deryn Sharpe, a girl who joins the Air Service on the side of Britain at the beginning of World War I. Westerfeld’s alternate-history world is a merging of biopunk, steampunk and dieselpunk influences, along with a few other ‘punks that have yet to be defined, and features appearances by historical personalities such as William Randolph Hearst and Nikola Tesla (the dénoûment of the three-book story takes place at Wardenclyffe). These books are full of strange creations and wonderful illustrations that will fire the imagination of any young engineer or biologist.

The audiobook version, read by actor Alan Cumming, is a treasure all it’s own.

Also available is the Manual of Aeronautics, a larger format companion volume featuring beautiful cutaway illustrations by Thompson, with notes by Westerfeld.

Recommended age: teenagers to adults

LadyAda’s “E is for Electronics” coloring book — available in the shop or as a free PDF — is a coloring book adventure with electronic components and their inventors. Makers of all ages can learn, color, and share common parts and historical figures throughout history. Explore the world of electronics with Ladyada as your guide!

All ages.

Games:

Cogs, by Lazy8Studios, is one of the most addictive puzzle games you’ll ever play. The puzzles are challenging and it looks really cool too, with a fun steampunk style.

Age: 8 to adult.

Machinarium by Amanita Design. This is such a great game. It’s got very challenging puzzles, but this is balanced out by one of the best hint systems in any game ever. Though it has no dialogue, it does a wonderful job of telling a cute little love story about two robots.

Age: 8 to adult.

SpaceChem by Zachtronics Industries. SpaceChem is a design-type puzzle game where the player must connect various chemical reaction ‘circuits’ to create new types of matter. An added benefit is that you learn about reactions and the periodic table while playing.

Age: 10 to adult

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Books from Adafruit

Coloring book – “Ladyada’s E is for electronics”: Ladyada’s E is for Electronics is a coloring book adventure with electronic components and their inventors. Makers of all ages can learn, color, and share common parts and historical figures throughout history. Explore the world of electronics with Ladyada as your guide! Coloring book dimensions: 8.5in x 5.5in (read more)

Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson: In Makers, Wired editor and bestselling author Chris Anderson reveals that a new industrial revolution is under way. Today’s entrepreneurs, using open-source design and 3-D printing, are employing micro-manufacturing techniques to create a tsunami of products in small batches, often customized for specific customers at higher margins. Every country, to remain economically strong, must make physical products if it doesn’t want to become a nation of burger flippers and checkout clerks. Yet in America and Europe, it has become harder and harder to sustain manufacturing as entire industries, from clothing to electronics, have shifted their factories to Asia and other low-cost regions. In the United States, manufacturing employment as a percentage of total working population is at a century-long low. (read more)

Encyclopedia of Electronic Components Volume 1 by Charles Platt: Want to know how to use an electronic component? This first book of a three-volume set includes key information on electronics parts for your projects—complete with photographs, schematics, and diagrams. You’ll learn what each one does, how it works, why it’s useful, and what variants exist. No matter how much you know about electronics, you’ll find fascinating details you’ve never come across before. (read more)

Getting Started with Arduino By Massimo Banzi – 2nd Edition: A maker classic, this valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book. (read more)

Programming the Raspberry Pi: Getting Started with Python: This is the book I’m currently reading. (And enjoying.) Program your own Raspberry Pi projects! Create innovative programs and fun games on your tiny yet powerful Raspberry Pi. In this book, electronics guru Simon Monk explains the basics of Raspberry Pi application development, while providing hands-on examples and ready-to-use scripts. See how to set up hardware and software, write and debug applications, create user-friendly interfaces, and control external electronics. Do-it-yourself projects include a hangman game, an LED clock, and a software-controlled roving robot. (Read me.)

Nonfiction Books from Other Places

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick: A fascinating and engaging investigation into the stuff at the heart of our contemporary world: information, communication, and information theory. Recommended by Kate Milford. (read more)

Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson: While certainly best known for his fiction — from the “invention” (or at least crystallization of “cyberpunk”) Neuromancer (1984) to his excellent near future tales such as Pattern Recognition (2003) and Zero History (2010) — the heartbeat throbbing under his work has always been his canny observation of the world we live in — and his ability to trace trajectories for where technology and culture will tangle together in the future. This collection of essays from publications ranging from WIRED to New York Times demonstrate Gibson’s strength addressing the contemporary world. As he has said before: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” (read more)

Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology (Wooden Books) & Sciencia: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Astronomy for All (Wooden Books): Dive into a study of the fundamentals of math and science in these two books that collect a heaping helping of short fascinating texts from Renaissance versions of the “classical canon” and beyond. This is nothing like a textbook, as we known them from the modern era! From the book jacket: “The quadrivium—the classical curriculum—comprises the four liberal arts of number, geometry, music, and cosmology. It was studied from antiquity to the Renaissance as a way of glimpsing the nature of reality. Geometry is number in space; music is number in time; and comology expresses number in space and time. Number, music, and geometry are metaphysical truths: life across the universe investigates them; they foreshadow the physical sciences.” Recommended by Kate Milford. (read more)

Six Books of Euclid by Werner Oechslin: And if you are hungry for more studies of geometry, this gorgeous 19th Century illustrated primer tells geometry the way is should be told — through images that clearly declare the relationships of elements and measures to each other. Recommended by Kate Milford. (read more)

Cabinets of Wonder by Christine Davenne (writer), Christine Fleurent (photographer): Fascinating tabletop book highlighting the return to fashion of the “curiosity cabinet.” Recommended by Kate Milford. (read more)

Fiction Books from Other Places

The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross: Science Fiction heavyweights join together to tackle the “techological singularity” with a co-authored novel. From the review from Paul di Fillippo: “In this milestone novel, Stross and Doctorow have risen to the perpetual SF challenge of portraying a world utterly estranged from our present, yet still somehow our must-be-acknowledged illegitimate bad seed spawn. They’ve raised the bar for all who follow in their footsteps.” (read more)

The Broken Lands by Kate Milford: A Coney Island-based prequel to the excellent The Boneshaker (2010) clockwork-Americana fantasy novel that Cory Doctorow described as a magic, latter-day Bradburian novel for young adults, The Broken Lands again demonstrates Milford’s incredible dexterity rendering her world. Not limiting herself to the “stuff” of historical fiction — clothing, activities and architecture of 19th Century Coney Island and New York City — she draws directly from the technology, culture, ideas, and mythology of the time to truly transport the reader into a different world, the past. Recommended by me! (read more)

Daemon and its sequel Freedom™ might be fast-paced action technothrillers, but there is a reason many of the people recommending this book to me are those who spend their lives working on the code and infrastructure of the Internet. There are great ideas here: webdevs, coders, network hackers, and security exploit hobbyists tend to passionately love this series. As did I! Recommended by Whosawhatsis. (read more)

Not Books As Much As Ways to Find Them!

Singularity & Co: Science fiction, fantasy, and vintage pulp, rescued from the ash bin of publishing through the creation of new eBooks and seeking to compensate the authors and estates rather than the publishers that let them fall off their backlists. An interesting project — grab a subscription for a friend to offer them the fascinating grab bag of what they are saving each month! (read more)

Small Demons: Taking a very different approach to how to socially link people to the books that they might enjoy, Small Demons traffics in tracing out the real world as it appears in books — and creating tools for you to immediately see links to, say, an audio tape from American Psycho or the brand of cigarettes in a thriller. From their “About” page: “Small Demons is a Los Angeles based company that believes powerful and interesting things can happen when you connect all the details of books.” Here’s an awesome place to start — 248 books mentioning LEGOs, including Gibson’s Spook Country, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. (read more)

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

There have always been dozens of ARM options out there for development boards, but — for a variety of reasons — it’s always been a niche interest in the mainstream DIY community. 2012, however, may go down as the the year that ARM and 32-bit finally makes lasting inroads into hobbyists electronics.

There have been a lot of high-profile development tools and established environments embracing ARM in a more official capacity this year than any point in the past, and it’s probably never been easier or cheaper to benefit from the amazing processing power per dollar ratio that modern, low-end ARM Cortex M processors offer.

Interested in taking the 32-bit plunge?  Hopefully this guide will give you a better idea of what options you have!

Arduino Due

Probably the highest profile ARM adopter this year has been the official Arduino board, the Arduino Due.  There have always been ARM-based Arduino boards or at least Arduino-footprint compatible boards out there, but the Due is different in that it has the official stamp of approval and backing of the core Arduino team, which makes it the easiest to purchase option for anyone familiar with Arduino and wanting to be certain that there will be a sufficient number of users online to make using it easy.  Based on an 84MHz ARM Cortex M3 processor from Atmel, it packs a lot more punch than the classic 8-bit Arduino UNO, but should be just as easy to get started with.  This is the safest bet if you’re just looking for some extra processing power, without having to dig into the intricacies of dealing with low-level peripherals yourself.

Teensy 3.0

The Teensy has always had a good following behind it, but the latest incarnation — the ARM Cortex M4 base Teensy 3.0 — is the most capable device yet.  It uses a Freescale Kinetis K-series chip (PK20DX128VLH5), which is based on the ARM Cortex M4.  The M4 differs from the more common Cortex M3 chips by adding some DSP-like instructions, and options for single-precision floating-point acceleration in HW.  Like previous versions of the Teensy, it allows you to use an IDE you’re probably familiar with from the Arduino platform, but is perhaps a bit more friendly if you want to get a bit closer to the bare metal without having to dive straight into the deep-end.

Raspberry Pi

The 500-lbs ARM gorilla in the room in 2012 is of course the insanely popular, incredibly powerful, surprisingly easy to use Raspberry Pi.

Aside from having a great team behind it, and a huge following in the larger HW, computer science and DIY world, it almost certainly represents the best processing-power-to-dollar ratio out there ($35 … come on!).

Need some serious processing power without having to learn all the ins and outs of getting embedded Linux up and running yourself?  Want to mess around with rich SW or OS development or add easy network connectivity without worrying about breaking expensive HW?  Want to get start working with modern HDMI displays or any LCD television for custom games on the cheap?  You can’t do better than the Pi, and as it looks close to hitting 1,000,000 boards sooner than anyone could have imagined, you can be sure answers to your questions are out there.

Added Bonus?  Adafruit has a great Raspbian-based distro called Occidentalis that makes developing with the Pi painless and you’ll be having fun writing your own code in no time!

Have a look at our many Raspberry Pi tutorials in the learning system to get started!

LPCXpresso

Interested in real bare-metal ARM development without breaking the bank?  The LPCXpresso family has really taken off in recent years, and includes a wide variety of ARM Cortex M0 and ARM Cortex M3 chips from NXP’s popular LPC family, combined with a free Eclipse-based IDE and an on-board HW-debugger so that you can step through your code line-by-line and start doing complex development and debugging for about 20 EUR/$30.

There are a number of boards available in the ecosystem, but if you’re looking for the best value I’d suggest the LPC1769-based boards.  The boards are all the same price, but the 120MHz ARM Cortex M3 based LPC1769 has every peripheral you’re likely to want, including a generous 512KB of flash and 64KB of SRAM.  Have a look at the LPCXpresso Forum for a fairly active online community around these popular boards and chips.

This is a good option if you want something that you can easily migrate to a manufacturable, commercial product, though the learning curve is higher as well.

The boards are available from a number of retailers, so a quick search on Google should turn up something local, or via a distributor like Mouser.

MBED

Also based on the popular LPC1000 family from NXP, MBED is a very easy to use online platform with two chips available.  The same LPC1769 mentionned above, and the smaller, very power efficient Cortex M0-based LPC11U24.  This is an extremely easy way to prototype and test ideas, with a lot of libraries available for complex tasks like NFC communication (we have an mbed kit for this based around the Adafruit PN532 Breakout), Internet access, Bluetooth, and almost anything else you can think of.

While the online environment is very easy to use and quite pleasant if you’re mobile, mbed now also offers the option to export your online projects to an offline toolchain or IDE, including project export options for LPCXpresso and GCC, and Keil’s commercial uVision IDE, amongst other popular toolchains.

The LPC1769 based mbed modules can be purchased from Adafruit, and the LPC11U24 modules are available from many online distributors and should be easy to locate somewhere on your continent!

Books

If you’re really interested in understanding the details of ARM’s most common deeply embedded processors, the ARM Cortex M0 (low power, and low cost) and the ARM Cortex M3 (much larger instruction set), the two best books you can purchase are the ‘Definitive Guides’ from ARM-employee Joseph Yiu: The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M0 and The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M3 (be sure to get the second edition of the latter!).

They’re both excellent books and very accessible, and any geek would be happy to find either or both of these under they’re Christmas tree!  I’m crossing my fingers hoping for an M4 version, but the beauty of ARM is that each chip builds upon the instruction set of lower versions, so the information covered in the previous books applies to the M4 as well … although it’s worth having both the M0 and M3 books since they both contain very valuable information.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Programming Arduino, by Simon Monk – This is a fantastic place to start if you’d like to start out with the Arduino. It would be a great complement to our new Learn Arduino series, also by Simon Monk and Ladyada, on the learning system.

Adafruit ARDX – v1.3 Experimentation Kit for Arduino - Interested in making neat stuff with an Arduino but not sure where to start? This kit includes all the pieces needed to complete 11 different circuits, along with a experimenter’s guide booklet & breadboard layout sheets.  It has everything you need to be playing upon arrival.

Programming the Raspberry Pi, by Simon Monk – Create innovative programs and fun games on your tiny yet powerful Raspberry Pi.  The Pi is a great tool to learn with, and is made even better with this book.

Raspberry Pi Starter Pack – Learning how to program on a desktop computer and outputting “Hello World” is useful, but maybe not as interesting as blinking LED’s on a Raspberry Pi with Python.  The Pi is a really powerful tool to learn how to program, and once you’ve mastered your language of choice, you can use your Pi in many creative ways!

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, by David Flanagan – This is my favorite book on JavaScript.  It covers everything you’d ever want to know over a massive 1100 pages.  As you learn JavaScript, it will be a great reference for a long time.  One of the newer features in version 6, is that it covers some basics of using node.js (which the Adafruit WebIDE is written in).  Once you’ve mastered JavaScript, you can also take a look at the fantastic Node Beginner ebook.

The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie – Referred to as the K&R book, it is widely considered the best book on programming in C.  It was first published in 1978, this latest revision is from 1988.  It covers the original ANSI C revision.

The Pragmattic Programmer, by Hunt and Thomas – This book is great for once you’ve already learned a language or two.  It’s a language agnostic guide to programming, explaining how knowledge, and not one language or IDE is the key to survival in a career of programming.

Das Keyboard – Until we can program directly using the power of our minds, we need to use a keyboard.  What better way then with a loud clickety-clackety keyboard from Das.  The Das keyboards use mechanical key switches similar to the classic IBM Model M keyboards that are still considered one of the best keyboards ever made.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

RF has always been fascinating to me — there’s something magical about sending and receiving bits and bytes over the air at high speed, through walls and concrete, out into space and back, etc.  While RF has a reputation for being complex — and it can get messy depending on what you need to do — there are a number of platforms, products and tools out there that make RF more accessible for hobbyists than it’s probably ever been before.  This quick holiday gift guide will hopefully highlight some of the tools you have at your disposal if you want to get started sending bits and bytes over the air yourself!

XBEE

Most people are familiar with XBees, the ubiquitous little blue modules that seem to exist in dozens of varieties.  This is still the classic and probably the most popular way to add wireless connectivity to your projects, with the most popular modules broken down into two separate device families (alas, not compatible with each other):

• Series 1 (802.15.4 Based) – This are the lowest cost and most popular XBEE modules, based on the open 802.15.4 standard – the foundation of many popular wireless protocols like 6LoWPAN, Zigbee, etc..  These can be used to simulate a basic serial/UART connection over the air, and are a great way to get started with wireless using easy to purchase modules.
• Series 2 (Zigbee Based) – These modules are based around a standard named Zigbee, which relies on 802.15.4 but includes a much richer framework for devices to interact with each other.  If you need to create wireless sensor networks with multiple nodes that need to interact with each other, Zigbee is a good solution.  If you simply require basic point to point communication between two or three nodes, though, the Series 1 devices are probably a better match, and will save you some SW complexity and money.
• Bonus Points: Digi Skill badge – Manage to get those XBee modules communicating with each other?  Let the world know with your Digi XBee skill badge!

NFC/RFID

NFC, which is based on 13.56MHz RFID, is a fun technology to use, particularly since it’s built into most recent Android smart phones.  It allows you to wirelessly communicate with other NFC-enabled devices, and to read and write ISO14443-based 13.56MHz RFID tags like the extremely popular Mifare Classic and Mifare Ultralight families.

One of the key advantages of 13.56MHz tags compared to earlier 125kHz tags and technologies is that the most popular families also integrate some EEPROM in the tags.  You still have a unique ID, but you can also read and write 1K or 4K of data on Mifare Classic cards, or read and write data to Mifare Ultralight tags in a secure way, with complete control over reads and writes using secure keys on a sector by sector basis.

If you’re interested in getting start with RFID and NFC, we have a number of professionally designed, tuned and tested boards available, along with 13.56MHz tags in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Recently, we started doing a LIVE show-and-tell using Google+ Hangouts where makers around the world show their project. We’re often asked what camera we use, software, computer, etc – so this is guide just for that. We’re hoping this is useful to someone who wants to make their own weekly LIVE electronics show! Let’s get streamin’ !

Computer(s)

For ASK AN ENGINEER we started out using one of the low-cost Shuttle shipping stations here at Adafruit, eventually we started using whatever laptop Phil has since he works on the show throughout the week. Over time as internet connections and web cameras got better, we’ve used the latest MacBook Pros to broadcast.

We are currently using a MacBook Pro 15-inch: 2.7GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 with Retina display and 16GB of RAM. For the IRC chat & show notes we use a secondary computer, it’s usually an older spare computer around here.

Cameras

We used free webcams that we received in a goodie bag from a tech conference up until a couple years ago, we’ve since upgraded to HD Pro Webcam C920s. They auto-focus, work on Macs and have been good in low light. These cameras work great with Google+ hangouts LIVE and Ustream Producer Pro.

We are currently experimenting with the Logitech Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam, we have nothing to report yet – but we’ll be using it for some special broadcasts soon.

Tripod, Flexi-arms, clips and whiteboard

We use tons of these spring clamps to hold cameras, parts and more. The whiteboard is to draw out schematics and more, we found this one in the trash near Wall Street.

Software

Ustream Producer Pro. You can start out with the free version and see if it fits your needs, we wanted lots of control of photos, additional videos, multiple cameras, picture in picture, overlays, HD, auto-broadcast to iPhones/iPads and mobile devices like Android phones.

For the SHOW-AND-TELL we use Google+ Hangouts and it automagically records and uploads to our YouTube account.

For the IRC chat we use Colloquy for Mac.

Net connection

We use Time Warner business class with 50 down and 5 up. Now we’re broadcasting in HD each week. Pro-tip, avoid any video broadcasting over Wi-Fi – it just does not work out that well, use a wire Ethernet cable.

Services (Vimeo, Youtube, Ad-Free Ustream)

Vimeo Pro account – We use the Ustream service to broadcast (it can record) but we like to add the chat along side the video in post production. Each week we (with our video producer George) record the shows, edit them to include the text chat and upload the video to our Vimeo plus account.

YouTube (free!). We love it! Please subscribe!

Ad-free Ustream Premium membership. $3.99 per month. Premium, members can watch all their favorite shows without pesky advertisements.

Boss cat director

He is a shelter cat that was adopted, all internet shows need a cat to show up at the end of the broadcast (rule #117 of the internet broadcast’s guild). Mosfet is getting older and requires special food, but there is a local pet store that stocks it. He also requires 1-2 catnip-mouse-feather toys every 3-4 months. He occasionally wears a tie when he needs to be boss cat.

But wait, there’s more…

We asked Becky Stern (Director of Wearables here at Adafruit) who also was the co-host of MAKE Live with Matt Richardson, what they used for their set up, here are some additional picks (we’ll be upgrading our show with some of this equipment very soon):

ZED-14 Mixer board. ZED-14 is a fantastic entry-level mixer for small bands, solo performers or AV applications. Its comprehensive feature set, compact size and fine lines combine to make it one of the best small mixers around. Provided with configurable USB audio in/out makes it easy to capture stereo recordings, 6 mic or line inputs, 4 stereo inputs with EQ, there are an incredible 157 controls on the front panel of the ZED-14.

Sennheiser EW112-p G3 Camera Mount Wireless Microphone System – A (516-558 MHz). The Sennheiser EW112-p G3 Wireless Portable Microphone System is intended for portable wireless operation, such as video and field recording applications. This camera-mountable system includes a UHF diversity receiver, bodypack transmitter and ME2 lavalier microphone. The SK100 G3 bodypack transmitter and EK100 G3 receiver synchronize channel and frequency at the touch of a button.

Impact Octacool-6 Fluorescent 2 Light Kit with Octabox (6 Lamps). The Impact Octacool-6 Fluorescent 2 Light Kit with Octabox (6 Lamps) is a great choice for the photographer or videographer seeking a broad, flattering light source with unique fall-off characteristics for portraiture, fashion or events. Octagonal-shaped light sources have long had a reputation as the preferred portrait-shooter’s light source. The shape offers an especially large surface area which produces that legendary “wrap-around” light, which envelopes the subject while creating natural-looking catchlights in the eyes.

If you like our show you can also vote for it here!

Proxxon 38128 TBM Bench Drill Machine – the ultimate small desktop drilling machine.  Use this to drill sharp holes into your PCBs with zero bit wobble.  With it’s small size, you can easily tuck it away when not in use.

Dremel 220-01 Rotary Tool Work Station - It won’t have even close to the same precision as the Proxxon drill press, but it comes at a fraction of the price.  Ideal for crafts, hobbies, metal working, and a variety of around-the-house jobs, the 220-01 Dremel Work Station transforms any Dremel rotary tool into a tabletop drill press. It can be bolted on to your workbench, and it has the versatility to operate as a tool holder, flex shaft holder, and drill press.

Dremel 300-1/24 300 Series Variable-Speed Rotary Tool Kit. Perfect for the do-it-yourselfer or anyone who is new to rotary tools, the Dremel 300-1/24 Variable-Speed Rotary Kit helps you complete a wide range of household, fine art, and repair projects. The rotary tool itself features an updated design for optimum comfort and control, as well as variable-speed control that allows you to set the speed of the tool to match specific accessories or tasks. The versatile rotary tool comes with a case, 24 accessories, and a circle cutter attachment–so you’re ready to tackle whatever project you dream up next.

Drill bit set. You’ll need these for drilling vias and holes.

10pcs of 1.00mm (.0394). These Mirco Drill Bits are made of Tungsten Carbide. The over all length is 1.50″. The shanks have a diameter of .1250 and all have identification rings on them. These are for drilling PCB holes.

5pcs of .50mm (.0197). These Mirco Drill Bits are made of Tungsten Carbide. The over all length is 1.50″. The shanks have a diameter of .1250 and all have identification rings on them. These are for drilling vias.

All these Drill Bits are made of Tungsten Carbide and the overall length is 1.50″. The shanks have a diameter of .1250 and all have identification rings on them. An assortment!

Press & Peel – Some people like to use magazines or other glossy paper. We kinda just like press-n-peel blue. Others like Pulsar.

PCB! Copper clad single sided is good to start - or beginners we suggest CEM which is not as strong as FR4 so its easier to cut and drill.

Photo supplies are very good for storage and etching: Developer trays & tongs – pour your etchant into these plastic trays. we have a few we keep around. Use these bamboo tongs to grab stuff in the etchant so you never have to put your hands in bottles.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Reverse engineering brings out the best in all gadgets. Giving life to new machines is not a new art, drawing from centuries of reuse and unlocking of obfuscated mysteries. When learned, reverse engineering brings a useful skill set and bag of tricks for use in a post zombpocalypse world. Some of us like to use our power for the LULZ and the w00t of it all, others enjoy using their purchased or acquired hardware to its full potential.

With some cabling, some tools, much reading of protocols and manuals, some practice, and an eye for the finer details, you can make hardware and firmware do your bidding. Make the seasoned or budding reverse engineer in your life very happy this holiday season with this round-up of essentials and hot new hacking hardware.

photo by Travis Goodspeed

GoodFET – An open source JTAG adapter

Ubertooth One – This open-source wireless dev platform is for Bluetooth projects.

Bus Pirate – An open-source, multi-tool, universal bus interface

rtl-sdr DVB-T – A reverse-engineered DVB-T dongle that has a software defined radio

github – A fantastic community and place to host your stuff – brownie points because public repositories are free.

hacking the xbox – A book by hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang.  Though it’s Xbox specific it’s crammed with universal truths for reverse engineering

(large and small) Oscilloscope – lovingly called an “aws-c” by reverse engineers, a crazy useful tool

A good user guide, with slightly outdated but still useful info can be found here: http://www.doctronics.co.uk/scope.htm

logic analyzer – For reverse engineering digital signals, it’s great for logging multi-channel events

avr programmer – An open source USB AVR programmer that’s easy to use with avrdude.  You can program almost any in-circuit serial programmable chip.

ftdi friend – This ftdi chip adapter simplifies the headache of interfacing with serial data.

notetaking device – AKA paper and a writing implement…remember that?

linux laptop – We like the lenovo x series thinkpad.  It’s lightweight, robust and linux friendly.

breadboards – Wire up something new…This one is “full-sized” with 830 tie points. It works well with small and medium projects.

arduino – A classic…get your prototype running in no time at all

arduino proto shield – Great for soldering stuff quickly to get your project going…and it’s on sale!

solid core wire – A must…use it to patch up your reverse engineer projects.

leatherman juice cs4 – My favorite multitool, in my favorite blue of course. It’s gotten me out of a jam and into a device many times

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Robotics Related Kits from Adafruit

Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino kit: I would be remiss not to share the classic Adafruit Motor Shield for Arduino, a place where many folks get their first taste for working with servos, steppers, and DC motors. Adafruit offers excellent training resources to help you get started with this kit in our Learning System. (read more)

OpenBeam Starter Kit – Silver Aluminum: Get cracking on your robot, fixture or gantry with this luxurious extruded aluminum starter kit. You get tons of stuff, so you won’t end up frustrated and missing a component. The pieces are also pre-cut so for many small projects you won’t even need to get out your hacksaw. All extrusions are 15mm by 15mm square. Also available in Black Aluminum! (read more)

Motor party add-on pack for Arduino: Once you get a taste for working with motors, you’ll start to hunt for the specific servos, steppers, and DC motors to solve each needed function. Here’s a grab bag of a bunch of the best ones to start with! (read more)

Hummingbird Robotics Kit: The Hummingbird robotics kit is a spin-off product of Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE lab. Hummingbird is designed to enable engineering and robotics activities for ages 10 and up that involve the making of robots, kinetic sculptures, and animatronics built out of a combination of kit parts and crafting materials. Combined with a cross-platform, very easy-to-use visual programming environment, Hummingbird provides a great way to introduce kids to robotics and engineering by using construction materials that they are already familiar with. (read more)

Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – I2C interface – PCA9685: Or maybe you need…even more motors! You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout. When we saw this chip, we quickly realized what an excellent add-on this would be. Using only two pins, control 16 free-running PWM outputs! You can even chain up 62 breakouts to control up to 992 PWM outputs (which we would really like to see since it would be glorious). (read more)

“3 Laws of Robotics” poster: This glossy poster featuring ADABOT and Asimov’s three laws of robotics measures 18 x 24 inches. Comes packed in a cardboard tube for shipping. MADE IN THE USA! (read more)

Other Robotics Kits

RoboBrrd by RoboGrrl: If you haven’t been following the world of talented young robotics designer RoboGrrl over the years, now is a great chance to dive into one of her newest projects over at Indiegogo. From her project description: “RoboBrrd is a robotic bird character that has an entertaining personality! When you build a RoboBrrd, you get hands-on experience of mechanical and electrical engineering, programming, and add a dash of your own creativity. … RoboBrrd, the cutest educational robot around, and aims to get everyone interested in robotics!” (read more)

RoboPhilo, RoboPhilo JR, and Robocrawler from Robobrothers: RoboBrothers create a number of affordable robot kits including RoboPhilo, RoboPhilo JR, and RoboCrawler, as well as many accessories such as the Philo Gripper Kit that adds the clasping hands to the Philo. While these may appear more expense than electronics kit Makers are used to, compared to the thousands of dollars for a typical robotics system, these are remarkably capable for how affordable they are. Don’t be frightened by the rudimentary website — these folks are robot designers, not web designers. (read more)

Hexbug™ Spider Hacking Kit (no Solder) by eric gregori: Rather than a robot kit that you buy and put together, this is a set of instructions for how you strip down and transform the clever Hexbug Spider toy into a versatile robot! Here’s a link to the PDF for the Spider project — and when you have completed all of the instructions, the spider can perform tasks such as following lines. (read more)

Hexy the Hexapod from ArcBotics: ArcBotics’ Hexy the Hexapod is an inexpensive, fully-articulated hexapod robot kit. From the product description: “Hexy has six legs, 19 servo motors and is powered by Arduino, while maintaining a price 4-10x less expensive than current hexapod robots. It makes complex robotics lest costly, easier to learn with the full tutorials and documentation, while being radically more fun (and cute!). At the same time its built with completely open source hardware and software, making discovery and extension as easy as building it in the first place.” (read more)

Elly the Elephant, Geno the Giraffe, and Rory the Rino from Kinetic Creatures: While these cardboard creatures might not be the first thing you think of when you think “robot,” those interested in creating complex walker robots have a lot to learn from the simple elegance of these three Kinetic Creatures. And they are darned cute — able to turn the heads of even the most technophobic, and fascinate them with how the kinetic assembly can achieve such smooth, in-character strides. While you are at it, consider grabbing the Motor Kit for automated kinetic behaviors. (read more)

OLLO and BIOLOID STEM kits from Robotis: Robotis has a tremendous range of comprehensive educational robotics offerings starting with a number of OLLO kits for those getting started with robotics on to the BIOLOID Standard and STEM kits for students looking to take their serious study of science and robotics further. The tremendous diversity of lessons and projects available in each kit puts many LEGO construction sets to shame. And for those who become more passionate about their robotics investigations, they offer the more expensive BIOLOID PREMIUM series of kits that according to the serious robotics enthusiasts I emailed for ideas is perhaps the best all-around kit on the market! (read more)

LEGO Mindstorms® NXT 2.0 from LEGO: The newest version of the premium LEGO Mindstorm® robotics kits has a number of great new additions, keeping this set as always at the forefront of robotics teaching kits. From the product description: “LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT is back and better than ever, with new robot models, even more customizable programming, and all-new technology including a color sensor! LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 combines the unlimited versatility of the LEGO building system with an intelligent microcomputer brick and intuitive drag-and-drop programming software. The new 2.0 toolkit features everything you need to create your first robot in 30 minutes and then tens of thousands of other robotic inventions that do what you want!”
(read more)

MAKE Rovera 2WD and 4WD Arduino Robot Kit: These two excellent Arduino robot kits from MAKE can be completed and explored in parallel to Michael Margolis’ new Make an Arduino Controlled Robot book, a great introduction to Arduino robotics for those getting started. (read more)

Medium Tank from Rocket Brand Studios: these Robot kits from Christopher Robinson are extremely capable, affordable Arduino tread robots that will help beginner robotics enthusiasts recognize the contributions of the various elements of the kit as they learn to code behaviors and consider how to expand their robot. (read more)

Robotics Skill Badge!

Robotics! – Skill badge, iron-on patch: You make robotics! BLEEP BLOOP! Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share. (read more)

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Women 2.0 » Get Gifts To Encourage Little Girls To Be Geeky! (Cyber Monday).

Here are some more items for young girls, from books and electronic LEGOs to free iPad games, created by engineers who want to help change the ratio in math, science and computer classes everywhere. And hopefully soon, this ratio will change in company boardrooms, engineering departments and science laboratories everywhere.

If you’re serious about electronics and engineering, you’re going to need some tools to help poke, prod, measure and coerce all those stray electrons into going to their proper destination or tracking them down when they go astray. While hardly exhaustive, this guide will hopefully point you to some of the keys tools you might need to design, build and test things more efficiently.

I’ve tried to list them in the order that I think they should be acquired from most frequently used to more specialized gear, but obviously it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.  Where relevant, I’ve tried to list at least two models, one lower cost but reliable option for people getting started or intermediate users, and one professional device that I know is tried and tested if you need something that you can rely on day in and day out year after year when the numbers really matter.

Digital Multi-Meter (DMM)

It’s important to buy good quality tools, but thankfully one of the most important tools on your bench is also one of the most affordable and easiest to find: the Digital Multi-Meter (often referred to as a DMM). The DMM lets you measure all kinds of critical information like voltage, resistance, continuity (testing if there is an electrical connection between two points), and depending on the model many other values like current draw, etc.  If you don’t already have a DMM, don’t be tempted by the $5 ebay specials.  Spend the money on a good entry level to intermediate model, since this is something you’ll find yourself pulling out again and again.

Learning to use a DMM should be your first step getting serious about electronics.  Learn how to check if a signal is actually high or low, make sure the voltage is what it should be before plugging something in, etc.

• Entry-Level: There are many options out there (not all being equal!), but for an affordable all-rounder check out the VIC830 DMM ($14.95!)
• Intermediate: The Extech EX330 12-Function Auto-Ranging Meter has all the measurement bells and whistles plus auto-ranging ($59.95)
• Professional:  OLED display, check. Tight tolerances, check.  Brick-sized and abuse-resistant, check.  I trust my Agilent U1253B day after day, and it’s a pleasure to use when you really need to trust your numbers.  Agilent’s main (and more perhaps more popular) handheld-DMM competitor is Fluke, which provides a number of competitively priced high-end meters, but I found feature for feature the Agilent U1253B was a slightly better value for money.  (Have a favorite Fluke meter and think I’m out to lunch?  Feel free to post it up in the comments!)  $450 for the Agilent, and $300-500 for competitive models.
• Test Lab: Are you setting up a shared lab space, and doing some complex characterization or test work with a lot of steps and data involved?  You might want a programmable DMM that you can control via USB or Ethernet.  The Agilent 34410A is a top-of-the-line bench-top DMM that won’t disappoint   There are less expensive options without USB and Ethernet, but if you’re serious about setting up a professional test lab and a shared working environment, it’s important to buy tools that can be programmed remotely with custom test SW, and Agilent has excellent libraries that allow you to program their devices in C++, C#, etc., or using Ethernet and LXI commands from any OS.  B&K Precision, Fluke and Keithley also have some excellent bench-top DMMs, but I looked into this in a lot of detail and found the 34410A was the best value for my needs and the level of precision and flexibility I was looking for.  If you don’t need USB/Ethernet, though, you’ll have more flexibility on price, but you want to be sure you have a DMM that you trust when the numbers and repeatability really matter. $1Kish and higher.

Soldering Station

Thanks to very hobbyist friendly platforms like Arduino that can be purchased pre-soldered, you can get your feet wet in electronics without having to learn how to solder, but if you want to start making anything yourself you’ll eventually have to pick up a soldering iron.  Although it’s intimidating for a lot of people at first, anyone can learn to do it.  It is  important to have a decent soldering iron, though, with enough heat to get the solder to reflow, otherwise the experience will be unnecessarily frustrating and unproductive.

• Entry-Level: There are many options out there for simple probes, but Adafruit’s 30W 110V soldering iron is a bargain and a safe first choice if you just don’t know if you’re going to stick with electronics as a hobby, and don’t want to spend $100 on a tool for something you’re just exploring.  At $22, this will allow you to solder header pins on your boards without breaking the bank.
• Intermediate: You can’t go wrong with the rock-solid Hakko FX-888.  It’s sleek, it’s reliable, it’s temperature adjustable (important if you work with lead and lead-free solder), and you can easily gets tips a plenty for it (which is one of the most important things when soldering … the right tip for the right job).  For the difference in price, don’t buy a crummy imitation off ebay or a $50 Chinese knock-off.  You’ll use and reuse this thing for ages, so the assurance of something well designed with quality heating elements is worth the extra money. I used Hakko for ages myself, and only upgraded because I needed SMT hot-tweezer adapters and wanted to be able to add a pre-heater, which meant going to a more flexible soldering station.  I still keep it as a backup unit, though! It’s $95 and a solid value.
• Professional/Test Lab: There’s a lot of debate here.  I have a Weller WX2021 that I’m very happy with (SMT Tweezers and dual heads, $900), but ladyada is very happy with her Metcal which I’ve used myself and found just as good (heats up very quickly and lots of accessories and tips).  I bought the Weller since I’m in Europe and it’s easier to get replacement tips and add-ons.  When you’re looking at $1,000 soldering stations,  make sure add-ons and repairs are readily available in your local market. A new professional grade units should put you out +/- $1K. Sometimes you can find a used units for less, just be sure it has the accessories you need!

Basic Hand Tools

Saleae Logic

I often mention Saleae’s Logic as one of the first tools I’d buy if my lab burned down, since it’s priceless if you ever have to work with sensors using common buses like I2C, SPI, I2S, etc.  It helps you to see exactly why a driver isn’t working and solve the problem in minutes, compared to hours of dull printf debugging or setting breakpoints in your code.  Logic lets you not only visualize the data transitions from high to low in an very attractive UI, it also interprets them to display the hexadecimal values of data being sent over SPI, etc., and can be used to check the timing constraints by measuring the delay between two capture points (perfect for verifying clock speeds, etc.).  I have a good mixed-signal oscilloscope with a 200MHz 8-channel logic analyzer and I do sometimes need to pull it out (Agilent MSO-X 2024A), but the Logic is always the first tool I go to since it’s so flexible and easy to use.

Writing you own drivers and don’t have one of these yet? Do yourself a favor and pick one up … it’s the best $150 you’ll spend and in an hour you’ll be wondering how you lived without it.

There are two models to choose from: The Logic 8 and the Logic 16.  They both use the same free software and function identically, but the Logic contains 16 channels and can capture signals up to 100MHz (less as you add channels).  The cheaper Logic 8 contains eight channels and is limited to 24MHz max.  Which one you require depends on the debugging you are doing, but if you only ever need to debug SPI and I2C sensors, the Logic 8 is probably all you will ever need.  The Logic 16 is more useful for debugging things like 8-bit buses with control lines or very fast signals, and is a nice upgrade but if you need it you probably understand the advantages and can decide yourself if it’s worth the extra money.

Oscilloscope

There was a joke at one of my former employers that every new engineer needs two standard pieces of equipment from day one: a good oscilloscope, and an intern. You’re on your own for finding interns, but there’s a reason oscilloscopes are so valued by engineers. They’re one of the most flexible and useful tools available during design, development and debugging, helping you spot difficult timing issues, and visualize data in a relatively easy to understand way. It’s most efficient way to find out if that buggy board is having issues because of noise on the lines, to quickly verify that values plugged into your MCU for the PWM output are right, to measure parameters like chip wake-up time and signal rise times, and many other things.

An oscilloscope isn’t a necessary purchase if you’re just casually interested in playing with Arduino, but if you become really serious about electronics and want to see and understand how things actually work and whats really going on with your HW, a good oscilloscope is the best investment you can make both financially and to bring your electronics know-how to the next level.

There are a lot of USB oscilloscopes out there, but if you can afford it, I’d personally recommend staying away from them and buying the right tool once and getting an entry level scope like the Rigol DS1052E. It’s a real HW oscilloscope, they’re an excellent value, and it will probably take a few years before you outgrow it, at which point you can likely sell it to upgrade since there’s always a market for oscilloscopes in the DIY and engineering community.  These can get very expensive very quickly, but the Rigol is a good value.  There are competitive units from companies like Owon that seem serious, but I only have first-hand experience with the 1052.  (Feel free to chime in in the comments section if you think the Owon’s or similar scopes are a better value than the Rigol!)

• Entry-Level: Honestly, save your pennies for a real HW oscilloscope, you won’t regret it.
• Mid-range: Rigol 1052E or similar scope ($400)
• Professional/Test Lab: Agilent MSO-X 2000 or 3000 series (can measure both analogue and digital signals, all the bells and whistles). Generally, $2K and up.

Microscope

I’m biased including this here.  I have absolutely terrible eye-sight and couldn’t get anything done without my bulky stereo microscope, but even for someone with vision better than mine a good stereo microscope with 5x and 10x magnification will give your hands superpowers, and imbue you with solder inspection prowess you never imagined you had.  Hand soldering 0402 or even 0201?  It’s all good with enough magnification!

While microscopes are a pretty standard fixtures for soldering and inspection in professional labs, there are actually two cases where you’ll probably want to different types of microscopes if you’re on a budget:

• Sometimes you need read part numbers of extremely small parts, inspect pads on a PCB, or just see that one solder joint on the edge of a QFN chip in much more detail than the naked eye will give you … this is where USB scopes come in handy since they can be viewed on large screens, and the display lag doesn’t matter.  Inspect but not soldering?  Go USB.
• Classic 10KG of metal stereo scope, though, are what you need for soldering.  USB scopes can be impressive tools for debugging and verifying HW, but you can’t solder with them since there is a delay before you see the image on your screen that makes it extremely awkward to solder with.  No such problems with a big chunk of analogue metal and glass and you’ll be soldering 0402 in no time!

• Entry-level USB microscope: Basic USB scope with LED illumination will get your eyes closer than you ever imagined.  Sniffing around bare dies?  No problem with this thing! $80
• Intermediate USB microscope: Aluminum USB Microscope with Precision Stand is a good investment since you often want something with precise movements and a solid base, particularly if you’re sewing several images together in post-production (such as photographing a die or large area of a PCB). $150
• Professional Stereo Microscope: Ebay is a great place to find stereo microscopes, but it can be confusing since you’re also competing with scientific instruments that aren’t as useful for electronics.  What you want for general purpose electronics work and precision soldering is something in the range of 5-20x magnification, and you should splurge for a ‘trinocular’ design.  The trinocular scopes have an optional third tube that can be used to insert USB cameras or DSLRs adapters (harder to find but they exist).  They’re not much more money the classic stereo microscopes, and the extra tube is worth the extra money.  You should also look for something called a barlow lens.  They come in a variety of factors but adjust working distance at the expense of magnification.  What I have myself is a 10-20x trinocular scope with a 0.5x barlow lense that cuts the magnification in hald to 5x and 10x, but doubles the working distance.  This gives me a perfect setup for soldering since these are ideal magnifications, and I have a lot of working space for my hands between the lense and the PCB. Also get some sort of LED illumination to shed some light on that board … the scope eats up a lot of light.  You really want the boom-stand version as well since you need to swivel the head around over the PCB!  $500 or so, and ebay is your friend in North America.
• Test Lab Setup: Mantis!  If you want to keep the backs of all your engineers happy and have deep pockets, this is where you should start your search.  If you need to ask the price you can’t afford it.

USB Analyzer

This is admittedly an extremely specialized item, but USB is also an extremely popular means of making your HW communicate with the outside world, and if you interested in commercializing anything, there’s a very good chance you’ll be using USB.  Unfortunately, debugging USB can be fraught with pain.  If you stop the device during initialization to debug it will probably stop the initialization process, or if you’re trying to spy on a USB device to get it work with USB Host you’ll find SW sniffers aren’t always up to the task.

The Beagle USB 12 Protocol Analyzer will allow you to capture and analyze any low or high-speed USB 2.0 traffic, and see what’s really going on frame by frame.  Not a tool that everyone needs, but if you’re serious about understanding USB and working with it and can deal with the 12MB/s limit (most small embedded MCUs can’t do more than full-speed USB anyway), the Beagle USB 12 Protocol Anaylzer is a good value. $400.

Still Can’t Decide? Get the Kitchen Sink!

If you’re a bit confused about what to buy and just getting started, have a look at Ladyada’s Electronics Toolkit.  A DMM, a soldering iron, a Panavise to hold that pesky PCB in place, wires, wire cutters … you can solder and test almost anything with this kit, and it’s sure to please anyone looking to get serious about electronics but not sure where to start for gear!

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Scan through some of the past entries in our weekly #piday series that highlights the latest news and products in this community. And, here are a few holiday shopping suggestions from Adafruit and beyond for the Pi fan, new or old!

Adafruit Kits To Make and Give

Raspberry Pi Starter Pack – Includes a Raspberry Pi Computer: You want to get hacking with your Pi fast, right? Get everything you need to start with the Adafruit Starter Pack for Raspberry Pi. It’s the perfect accompaniment to your new Pi, everything you need to get a distro image loaded and running. We pre-assemble the Cobbler for you, no soldering required. This pack includes a single Raspberry Pi Model B 512MB RAM, two USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet controller. (read more)

Adafruit Pi Box – Enclosure for Raspberry Pi Computers: Keep your Raspberry Pi® computer safe and sound in this lovely clear acrylic enclosure. We designed this case to be beautiful, easy to assemble and perfect for any use (but especially for those who want to tinker!) The case comes as 6 pieces that snap together, made of crystal-clear acrylic. This ingenious design has no screws or standoffs and there are cute little feet cut into the sides so that it stands up above your desk. There are engraved labels on all the connector slots. You can use all of the connectors on the edges of the Pi: HDMI, Audio, Video, SD slot, micro USB power, Ethernet and the two USB ports. We also added a slot so that you can connect a 26-pin IDC cable to the GPIO breakout pins on the Pi and pass it though the case. For more advanced hacking, the enclosure is designed so that you can remove the top piece and plug any sort of cables you wish into the breakouts in the middle. The case is airy enough that no additional vents or cooling is required – we tested the enclosed Pi over a 24 hour period at full load with no significant increase in temperature. (read more)

Adafruit Prototyping Pi Plate Kit for Raspberry Pi: Now that you’ve finally got your hands on a Raspberry Pi® , you’re probably itching to make some fun embedded computer projects with it. What you need is an add on prototyping Pi Plate from Adafruit, which can snap onto the Pi PCB (and is removable later if you wish) and gives you all sorts of prototyping goodness to make building on top of the Pi super easy. We added lots of basic but essential goodies. First up, there’s a big prototyping area, half of which is ‘breadboard’ style and half of which is ‘perfboard’ style so you can wire up DIP chips, sensors, and the like. Along the edges of the proto area, all the GPIO/I2C/SPI and power pins are broken out to 0.1″ stips so you can easily connect to them. On the edges of the prototyping area, all of the breakout pins are also connected to labeled 3.5mm screw-terminal blocks. This makes it easy to semi-permanently wire in sensors, LEDs, etc. There’s also a 4-block terminal block broken out to 0.1″ pads for general non-GPIO wiring. Finally, we had a little space remaining over the metal connectors so we put in an SOIC surface mount chip breakout area, for those chips that dont come in DIP format. (read more)

Adafruit Pi T-Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi: Now that you’ve finally got your hands on a Raspberry Pi® , you’re probably itching to make some fun embedded computer projects with it. What you need is an add on prototyping Pi T-Cobbler from Adafruit, which can break out all those tasty power, GPIO, I2C and SPI pins from the 26 pin header onto a solderless breadboard. This mini kit will make “cobbling together” prototypes with the Pi super easy. Designed for Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 1 or Revision 2. This Cobbler is in a fancy T-shape, which is not as compact, but is a little easier to read the labels. We also have the more compact original Cobbler. (read more)

Low-profile microSD card adapter for Raspberry Pi: Make your Pi a little slimmer with this microSD card adapter board. It slides in where the SD card goes but is half the length. Pop in a microSD card for a sleeker machine. The microSD card holder is a push-push type so you can push on the edge that sticks out to remove the card when necessary. (read more)

Adafruit Blue&White 16×2 LCD+Keypad Kit for Raspberry Pi: This new Adafruit Pi Plate makes it easy to use a blue and white 16×2 Character LCD. We really like the 16×2 Character LCDs we stock in the shop. Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 1 to control the backlight for a total of 7 pins. That’s nearly all the GPIO available on a Pi! With this in mind, we wanted to make it easier for people to get these LCD into their projects so we devised a Pi plate that lets you control a 16×2 Character LCD, up to 3 backlight pins AND 5 keypad pins using only the two I2C pins on the R-Pi! The best part is you don’t really lose those two pins either, since you can stick i2c-based sensors, RTCs, etc and have them share the I2C bus. This is a super slick way to add a display without all the wiring hassle. This pi plate is perfect for when you want to build a stand-alone project with its own user interface. The 4 directional buttons plus select button allows basic control without having to attach a bulky computer. (read me)

Miniature WiFi (802.11b/g/n) Module: For Raspberry Pi and more: Make your Internet of Things device cable-free by adding WiFi. Take advantage of the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Bone’s USB port to add a low cost, but high-reliability wireless link. We tried half a dozen modules to find one that works well with the Pi and Bone without the need of recompiling any kernels: its supported by the Bone’s Angstrom installation that comes with each Bone as well as the Adafruit Occidentalis distribution. You’ll have wireless Internet in 10 minutes! Works great with 802.11b/g/n networks. (read more)

Board Edge Mounting Kit – Pack of 4: Having difficulty attaching a PCB? This kit is especially useful when there are no mounting holes – as with the original Raspberry Pi. Instead of gluing, taping, epoxying, etc. use these elegant standoffs. They have these round hook things that are designed to grip standard 0.062″ thickness PCBs either by the edge or by the corner. Comes in a pack of 4 with matching #6 thread forming screws. Ideal for use with up to 1/8″ mounting material. We have these as part of the Pi Dish kit and they work really well!. (read more).

Stacking Header for Raspberry Pi – 2×13 Extra Tall: Stack multiple plates, breakouts etc onto your Raspberry Pi with this custom-made extra-tall and extra-long 2×13 female header. The female header part has extra spaces to make it 13.6mm tall: when placed on your Pi, a PCB will clear the Ethernet and USB jacks. The stacky pin part is also extra-long, 9.7mm, so that when a standard 1.5mm thickness PCB is installed, there will be 8mm remaining, plenty to plug into. You’ll get one header per order. (read more)

Adafruit Pi Dish for Raspberry Pi – Includes Breadboard: By popular demand! We now have a way to attach a Raspberry Pi computer to a plastic ‘dish’ with a full-sized breadboard. We designed it carefully to make it as easy as possible to attach and detach the Pi. Since the Pi computer does not have any mounting holes, we use these nifty plastic edge ‘grabbers’ – they are incredibly strong but will not damage the Pi circuit board. There are two ways to mount the Pi on to the plate – one if you want to use the HDMI output primarily and one if you plane to use the composite output (they’re on opposite sides of the board so its not possible to have both easily accessable) Next to the Pi is a spot for a full sized breadboard, plenty of space for your project even if you’re using an Adafruit Cobbler breakout helper. We also include 4 rubber bumpers to attach to the bottom. (read more)

Slices of the Pi of Others

Rainbow PiBow – Enclosure for Raspberry Pi Computers from PiBow: The Pibow is a colorful, durable and fun case for the Raspberry Pi® computer that is perfectly in touch with the ethos of the Raspberry Pi. The case is crafted out of seven unique colorful layers with a transparent top and base. Each layer is laser cut from colorful high-quality cast acrylic and once stacked they securely contain a Raspberry Pi while leaving the primary ports accessible. Weighing only 92 grams the case is lightweight and ideal for mounting to any surface. Held together by nylon bolts no tools are required for assembly or dissasembly. (read me)

Pi Holder milled aluminum case for Raspberry Pi from Barch Designs: This gorgeous and indestructible Raspberry Pi™ Case is as awesome as it is functional. Made in the U.S.A. by Barch Designs from Solid 6061-T6 Aircraft Grade Billet Aluminum which protects your Raspberry Pi from damage and also keeps your Pi running extra-cool by acting as a thermal heat sink. (Please note: heat sinking is not required to use the Pi, but some people like having their Pi run cold). The Pi Holder case is milled by Barch Designs on a CNC machine to exact tolerances. This allows just enough room for the Raspberry Pi to slide down into the case. Any bigger and the Pi would be loose and any smaller it would bind up. (read more)

Raspberry Pi User Guide by Gareth Halfacree and Eben Upton from Wiley: Raspberry Pi User Guide contains everything the reader needs to know to get up and running on the Raspberry Pi. Written by Gareth Halfacree and Eben Upton, the co-creator of Raspberry Pi, the book shows how to:

• Connect the Raspberry Pi to other devices — keyboard, mouse, monitor
• Install the necessary software
• Learn basic Linux System Admin in order to understand files systems etc.
• Configure the Raspberry Pi
• Set-up the Raspberry Pi as a simple Productivity computer
• Set-up Raspberry Pi as a web server
• Write basic programs in Scratch and Python
• Create simple hardware projects
• Set up the Raspberry Pi to drive a multimedia center

Raspberry Pi User Guide is an ideal companion when starting out using the Raspberry Pi board. (read more)

Programming the Raspberry Pi: Getting Started with Python by Simon Monk from McGraw Hill/TAB: Create innovative programs and fun games on your tiny yet powerful Raspberry Pi. In this book, electronics guru Simon Monk explains the basics of Raspberry Pi application development, while providing hands-on examples and ready-to-use scripts. See how to set up hardware and software, write and debug applications, create user-friendly interfaces, and control external electronics. Do-it-yourself projects include a hangman game, an LED clock, and a software-controlled roving robot.

• Boot up and configure your Raspberry Pi
• Navigate files, folders, and menus
• Create Python programs using the IDLE editor
• Work with strings, lists, and functions
• Use and write your own libraries, modules, and classes
• Add Web features to your programs
• Develop interactive games with Pygame
• Interface with devices through the GPIO port
• Build a Raspberry Pi Robot and LED Clock
• Build professional-quality GUIs using Tkinter

(read more)

Boast Your Pi Skillz!

Raspberry Pi – Skill badge, iron-on patch: You are learning to use the small Linux based board, the Raspberry Pi! Adafruit offers fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share. This is the “I made something with a Raspberry Pi” badge for use with educators, classrooms, workshops, Maker Faires, TechShops, Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and around the world to reward beginners on their skill building journey! This beautiful badge is made in the USA. (read more)

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Ladyada’s Hacker Gift Guide for Hack Black Friday #hackfriday [Gift Guide 2012] @ ZDNet.

We wanted Black Friday to be more exciting – so we put together a gift guide for hackers and asked MIT engineer & hacker, Limor “Ladyada” Fried for her top recommendations in the realm of all things open source electronics and hacker gear.

If you must shop, help them make or hack something great. This Hack Black Friday Gift Guide features a SIM card reader/writer, discreet lockpick kits, router hacking kits, a USB analyzer, cool new items like Raspberry Pi and MaKey MaKey, fun stuff like the Hackerspace Passport, Hackerscout Badges and a coloring book for the littlest hackers and more.

Read more!

Photography: bringing people together since the 19th century.

Today’s gift guide is all about photography. In this guide, I’m going to present a few handy tools that I’ve found useful as a working photographer. Any of these would make a great gift for the photographer in your life (or yourself!). Before we get to that stuff, though, let’s talk about cameras. I would point out that a camera is an item I think everyone should choose for themselves, because it’s a tool of self-expression. However, there are some general rules to keep in mind whether you’re buying for yourself or somebody else. If you’re looking for technical specs or reviews, there are literally hundreds of websites — my personal favorite is dpreview. As far as finding the camera that’s right, though, it’s really all a matter of personal preference. I find it useful to consider the following:

1. How intuitive is it? Are the controls easy to understand (or easily learnable)? Does it feel comfortable to use? If it’s impossible to figure out how to change the focus point or turn the flash off within 30 seconds of picking it up, put the camera down and look at another one. This is probably the most important thing. The only way to take better pictures is with practice, and the learning feedback loop is considerably smoother if the photographer is not constantly fumbling with awkward controls.

2. How comfortable is it? Can you imagine someone carrying it around for an entire day?

3. How durable is it? Will it be tossed into a bag without a second thought, or gingerly returned to the case after each use? Think about how it will be treated, and choose accordingly.

That’s it. Battery life is important (though you should always buy and carry spares), but megapixels don’t matter very much — all modern digital cameras are capable of producing film-quality 8×10 prints. Unless it’s expected that larger prints will be required, 8 megapixels is plenty. Lower Mpix counts also tend to have lower noise, so when shooting a lot in available light without flash, it can actually be an advantage.

Now that we’ve gotten the camera advice out of the way, let’s move on to the gear!

Datacolor Spyder4Pro Monitor Calibration Package ($169 – B&H Photo)

A calibrated monitor is indispensable when it comes to editing photos. On their own, most monitors have a very strong blue-to-green color cast along with poor tone and color rendition. A monitor calibrator analyzes the output of the monitor against a fixed standard, generates a corrected profile, and gives this information to your video card, where it is applied to the output.

The corrected color and tone mean that things look more like they’re supposed to, whether it’s photos you’re editing, movies you are watching, or whatever. If you spend a lot of time in front of the screen, you’ll find a calibrated display is easier to look at, because the greys and whites of the windows actually look grey and white.

Be warned: the first few times you use a calibrated monitor, the greys and whites will look reddish, because you’re used to a blue-tinted display. But eventually, you’ll wonder how you ever got on without one.

Adobe Lightroom 4 ($109.99 – B&H Photo)

For processing of RAW images, I use Adobe Lightroom. Now, to be fair, I have a PC, so I sorta have to use it. If I had a Mac (or a Hackintosh), I would seriously consider Aperture, because it’s an excellent program too. I used to use Photoshop to convert files from RAW, but since I started using Lightroom I find I do 90% of my work in half the time, and I only use PS for more involved editing and retouching. If I just have to color-correct, crop, and downsize, I can do all of that in LR. Lightroom 4 also features support for printing and tethered shooting (for certain cameras), and the ability to upload directly to Flickr, Picasa and other photo-hosting services.

Monolight Strobes (Alienbees 400, 800, 1600 – $225-360, Paul C. Buff, Inc.)

I love these little guys — they’re the only lights I use now. Ladyada uses them too! They’re well made, reliable, not too expensive. Granted, there are less expensive generic monolights out there, but I’ve never found any of them to be as durable as the Bees. And the customer service from Paul C. Buff, the manufacturer, is excellent. I also like that they offer a full line of accessories which are equally well made.

Another point to consider is that it’s very easy to make your own modifiers. Unlike many light systems, which use a custom flange/bayonet for mounting things to the light, the Bees use a a simple spring clamp, which fits inside a 3.5″ circle. If you want to attach your own modifiers, just cut the appropriately-sized hole in them with a hole saw and clamp them on.

There are three models of the classic AlienbBees light: the B400, the B800, and the B1600. The only difference between them is light output. The 400 puts out plenty of light for shooting things like products on a table or headshots, but consider upgrading to a B800 or B1600 if you plan to do large group portraits or use a large softbox (softboxes absorb a LOT of light).

Manfrotto 055XB Tripod with Quick-release Ball Head ($232 – B&H Photo)

You can buy one good tripod for $230 and keep it for life, or you can buy a $99 tripod every 12 months when your old one breaks. Aside from providing a camera platform for self-portraits, a solid tripod is very useful for landscapes and cityscapes. It’s also absolutely critical for macro shooting, where shutter speeds are rather long and vibration can be a significant problem. Speaking of macro…

Dedicated Macro Lens ($300-900, depending on focal length and manufacturer)

For folks looking to take close-up photos to the next level, you should consider buying a dedicated macro lens. Most zoom-telephoto lenses have some macro capability, but it’s limited, and the quality is often less than ideal. Dedicated macro lenses are available for nearly all SLR brands, often in several different performance tiers and focal lengths. Nikon, for example, offers a 40mm macro for cropped sensor (DX) cameras ($276), a 60mm midrange ($550) and their top-of-the-line 105mm with vibration reduction ($900). Likewise, Canon offers a 60mm ($500) and two versions of their 100mm lens — the standard version ($600) and an L version ($900), as well as some specialty lenses. Macro lenses are optimized for performance at close focusing distances and larger magnifications, which means they tend to have greater resolving power. This translates to a much sharper lens in general use.

If you plan to take pictures of subjects like flowers, lenses in the 60mm range (or the Nikon 40mm) are a good choice because they have a wider field of view. They also tend to lighter and be more compact, which is nice if you’re walking around with them all day. The downside is that you have to get closer to small subjects in order to fill the frame, which can be uncomfortable and interfere with lighting (you + your camera block the light).

For subjects which are smaller or further away, the 100mm range is useful because it gives you a greater working distance between the camera and the subject — that is, you don’t have to be right on top of the subject to take a picture of it. These lenses are also wonderful as portrait lenses, due to their large aperture (f/2.8), which allows you to throw the background completely out of focus — many of them have image stabilization too.

A nice compromise between 60 and 100mm is the highly-regarded Tamron 90mm/2.8 ($500), which is available for Nikon, Canon, Sony/Minolta and Pentax cameras, and also has image stabilization.

LowePro SlingShot 202 AW Backpack ($62 – B&H Photo)

A nice, lightweight back for day tripping and hiking. Enough room for three or four lenses, a speedlight, memory cards, and a pocket on top for all your other stuff. It also has a built-in ‘raincoat’ you can deploy to keep your gear nice and dry.

Dedicated Hard Drive for Photos (prices vary by size — numerous vendors)

It’s a wise idea to keep all personal photos on a dedicated hard drive, physically separate from your OS and applications. Store all originals and edits on this drive, and don’t use it for anything else. At least once a year, it’s a good idea to buy a new one, copy the most recent photos onto it, then remove and store the original in a secure place (like a safe or safe-deposit box at a bank). These are your original photos, so you should take care of them.

If you’re going the safe deposit box route, consider buying a smaller 2.5″ laptop harddrive, which takes up less space. Remember that this drive is only used for storing and loading photos, and not for constant use, so you can get away with a 5400RPM model and/or a 16MB cache.

Boom Lightstand with 22-inch Reflector ($85 – B&H Photo)

Great for shooting small stuff on a tabletop, and particularly useful for shooting video. The reflectors can be used to bounce light back into a scene and to provide fill light. You can use the disc without a reflective covering as a diffuser, or use it with a cover to cast a shadow. You can also mount a speedlight on the boom arm to put a light source in an otherwise difficult spot, or use the clips to mount a small acrylic mirror, for a focused fill effect.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Here are a few suggestions from Adafruit and beyond!

Adafruit Kits To Make and Give

Minty Boost Kit v3.0: An Adafruit classic, this kit continues to evolve to meet the various needs of the phones in your lives — and remains a favorite gift for friends-of-hackers to receive. Snoop around and find out the make and model of the phone or other USB device of people you love — and then deliver them a kit to have in a backpack or purse so they will never be without power! (read more)

MONOCHRON Clock kit: Watches and clocks have been tried-and-true gifts for hundreds of years. Part of it is the utility — it is nice to know the time or at least observe the passage of it! — but the other part is the human mind’s endless fascination with the complex mechanical and/or electronic processes for keeping time. The Monochron Clock offers something special — the classic game ancestor re-purposed as a timepiece! (read more)

FLORA GPS Starter Pack: As Becky has been evangelizing through her videos and projects, nothing says “love” to someone who loves electronics, technology, and the future better than creating a unique wearables project for them that no one else in the world has ever worn. The FLORA GPS pack gets you started with a dynamic brooch, crest, or other detail — and the GPS module offers you the possibility of geo-located triggering and toggling! Embroider a cunning FLORA scarf and include a map for where the the recipient should wear it to experience a special behavior or light show or secret morse code message! (read more)

TV B-Gone: Sure, you can get a fully assembled TV-B-Gone Remote from Mitch’s Cornfield Electronics, but how much cooler is it to have the hand-soldered unit! Makers will relish the chance to quickly solder the thing up and test it, and those they give the unit to will then benefit from the time and care the Maker has put into testing it! (read more)

The Kits of Others

MaKey-MaKey from Joylabz: One of the advantages of MaKey-MaKey’s simplicity is that you can use the kit to make a touchpad or controller from almost anything. So why don’t you take a little bit of time to bundle in a fun, silly set of “controller” objects with a MaKey-MaKey to give that intimate, thoughtful touch to your gift? Conductive jell-o, fruit, cashews, tin-foil, graphite pencils … let your imagination run wild! (read more)

Googly Eye Shield for Arduino from Evil Mad Science: Here’s a kit to make for a the Arduino fanatic in your life! The Evil Mad Science Googly Eye Shield for Arduino. From the product description: “A simple ‘platform’ shield with labeled break-out points from every position on the edge connectors. Plus, googly eyes! The Googly Eye Shield is sold as a soldering kit. It includes the circuit board, stacking headers, four googly eyes (two each in two different sizes), and glue dots to mount the googly eyes. Detailed, photo heavy instructions provided online.” (read more)

The Brain Machine Kit v1 by Mitch Altman: Relax and rejuvenate as your brain synchronizes to a wonderful meditative state, and enjoy as you hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns from your subconscious mind! The Brain Machine provides you with a fun, easy way to meditate, all the while being very photogenic! They work with lights and sounds that pulse at a 14-minute-long meditation sequence of brainwave frequencies. Your brain synchronizes to this meditation sequence, and you meditate. It’s that easy! And the beautiful colors and patterns you vividly imagine along the way make it fun and enjoyable. The Brain Machine works with blinking lights. Be aware that blinking lights are not good for some people, especially those prone to seizures! (read more)

Deluxe LED Menorah Kit from Evil Mad Science: Here’s a really easy through-hole soldering kit you can solder up to give to friends or family for Hanukkah — even those with no familiarity with electronics will be able to run it and advance through the days of the season. (read more)

And a Wee Gift for Yourself!

Learn to solder – Skill badge, iron-on patch: And don’t forget something for yourself. You can solder — you’ve just proved it! Adafruit offers fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Circuit Playground (iOS Only) – Circuit Playground simplifies electronics reference & calculation so you can have more fun hacking, making, & building your projects! This app is designed for both iPhone and iPad.

• Decipher resistor & capacitor codes with ease
• Calculate power, resistance, current, and voltage with the Ohm’s Law & Power Calc modules
• Quickly convert between decimal, hexadecimal, binary or even ASCII characters
• Calculate values for multiple resistors or capacitors in series & parallel configurations
• Store, search, and view PDF datasheets
• Access exclusive sneak peaks, deals & discounts at Adafruit Industries

ElectroDroid (Android Only) – Powerful collection of electronics tools and reference.A must for any enthusiast

ElectroDroid is a simple and powerful collection of electronics tools and reference; it includes: Resistor color code decoder (3-6 bands), Inductor color code decoder, Ohm’s law calculator, Reactance calculator, Voltage divider, Resistor ratio, value/series/parallel, Capacitor charge calculation, and much much more.

AutoCAD WS (multi-platform) – Open and edit DWG files with just a web browser and from any computer. Manage and edit drawing files using a powerful set of AutoCAD© tools.

Mechanical Engineer (iOS Only) – part of MultiEducator’s “Formulator” Line, is the perfect tool for any Mechanical Engineer or engineering student. Available for both iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch, our Mechnical Engineer app contains over 300 important mechanical engineering formulas, there are over 300 additional conversion formulas in the program as well as 70 area formulas. Major areas covered in the program now include: Actuators Bearings, Belts, Boiler, Brakes, Clutches, Elevators, Gears,Fluid Power, Heat Transfer,Internal Combustion, Kinetic Energy, Metalworking, Plates, Plumbs, Power Plants, Refrigeration,Shafts Springs and Vehicle Drive.

Educreations (iOS Only) – an interactive white board.  Educreations turns your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Creating a great video tutorial is as simple as touching, tapping and talking. Explain a math formula… Create an animated lesson… Add commentary to your photos… Diagram a sports play…

With voice recording, realistic digital ink, photos and text, and simple sharing through email, Facebook or Twitter, now you can broadcast your ideas from anywhere.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Blinkies from Adafruit:

Digital Addressable RGB LED w/ PWM waterproof flexi strip: These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. And we recently upgraded these strips from the old HL1606 chipset to the latest and greatest, the LPD8806 – a chip that has a hig-speed full-color PWM built in! How about … 2 MILLION colors per pixel!

16×32 RGB LED matrix panel: Bring a little bit of Times Square into your home with this 16 x 32 RGB LED matrix panel. These panels are normally used to make video walls, here in New York we see them on the sides of buses and bus stops, to display animations or short video clips. We thought they looked really cool so we picked up a few boxes of them from a factory. They have 512 bright RGB LEDs arranged in a 16×32 grid on the front. On the back there is a PCB with two IDC connectors (one input, one output: in theory you can chain these together) and 12 16-bit latches that allow you to drive the display with a 1:8 scan rate. Check out our great tutorial to get these up and running in a blink of a bulb!

Adafruit Mini 8×8 LED Matrix w/I2C Backpack – Blue: What’s better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small display is to use an 8×8 matrix or a 4-digit 7-segment display. Matrices like these are ‘multiplexed’ – so to control 64 LEDs you need 16 pins. That’s a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can control a matrix for you but there’s a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That’s where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in. We have them in two flavors – a mini 8×8 and a 4-digit 0.56″ 7-segment. They work perfectly with the matrices we stock in the Adafruit shop and make adding a bright little display trivial. And check out some of incredible projects you can create from clusters of these — like Phil’s e-demon Halloween project below!

Flora RGB Smart Pixel: What’s a wearable project without LEDs? Our favorite part of the Flora platform is these tiny smart pixels. Designed specifically for wearables, we found the brightest RGB LEDs available (an eye-blistering ~3800mcd) and paired them with a constant-current driver chip that sits on the back. The pixels are chainable – so you only need 1 pin/wire to control as many LEDs as you like. They’re easy to sew, and the chainable design means no crossed threads. These pixels have full 24-bit color ability with PWM taken care of by the controller chip. Since the LED is so bright, you need less current/power to get the effects you want. The driver is constant current so its OK if your battery power changes or fluctuates a little.

Blinkies from Our Friends!

Blue 5 mm Clear 40 Degree LED from Evil Mad Scientist: Sometimes what your project needs isn’t a crazy control board or dense array of sources — you can do great things with simple, dedicated components like these new general-purpose 5 mm (“standard size”) ultrabright blue LEDs with a water-clear lens. They offer extremely bright light, projected in a wide cone. Check out a project that benefits tremendously from this light dispersal pattern: lightweight electric origami!

3x3x3 LED Cube Arduino Shield from the Maker Shed: What has 27 LEDs, is 3 dimensional, and is Arduino controlled? It’s the 3x3x3 LED Cube Arduino Shield designed and built by young maker superstar Joey Hudy. The cube’s 3D construction is straightforward and easy to solder using the included jig and instructions. Sample code is available and can easily be modified to make your own basic animations and displays. It’s available in both red and green so you can pick your favorite color and have it up and flashing in no time!

BlinkM MaxM, he ultrabright smart LED from ThingM: While ThingM’s blink(1) units aren’t ready for general sale after their Kickstarter project, their BlinkM MaxM units are great go-to blinky kit. It’s an intensely-bright smart LED that comes as a package of two components, a control module (MaxM Master) and a daughter board with three ultrabright LEDs (MaxM Blaster). MaxM Master runs ThingM’s unique firmware that creates virtually any RGB color, fades smoothly between two colors, and blinks in virtually any pattern (it can flash like a police light, for example, or flicker like a candle).

Blinky Grid Red SMT from Wayne and Layne: This is the surface-mount version of their Blinky Grid kit, and is a great way to learn and practice surface-mount soldering. While W&L won’t say that everyone can successfully solder surface-mount, you do not need extreme dexterity or super eagle vision. They have built a bunch of these with people who have never soldered surface mount before, between seven and fifty or so years of age – and everyone has been successful!

And Don’t Forget, You Earned Bragging Rights

LEDs – Skill Badge, iron-on Patch. You learned LEDs! (Light-emitting diodes)… Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share. This is the “I made something with LEDs!” badge for use with educators, classrooms, workshops, Maker Faires, TechShops, Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and around the world to reward beginners on their skill building journey! This beautiful badge is made in the USA. The badge is skillfully designed and sturdily made to last a life time, the backing is iron-on but the badge can also be sewn on.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

FLORA GPS Starter Pack – Get started with the fabulous Adafruit Flora platform with this lovely starter kit. Included are plenty of parts to make a few different fun projects! There’s a Flora motherboard, a GPS module that can also perform location data logging, eight ultra-bright chainable RGB pixels, a battery holder and batteries, two types of our high quality stainless steel thread, alligator clips to help you test out your parts, a USB cable for reprogramming the Flora, and some parts to make a wearable remote control (or TV-B-Gone!): NPN transistors, long range IR LEDs, and matching resistors. Over $120 worth of goodies, for under $100.

Aniomagic Sparkle Kits – These kits contain parts necessary for an easy, low cost introduction to e-textiles. You get the Sparkle controller board, 4 sewable LEDs, some conductive thread, and a battery with little adhesive bits to make your own holder for it. Complete instructions finish the picture so even the least experienced electronics n00b can make a stunning e-textiles creation.

Stainless Thin Conductive Yarn / Thick Conductive Thread – This 316L stainless steel thread falls somewhere between a thick thread and a thin yarn. Because the thread is thick and has the ‘furry’ soft feel of yarn it won’t work well in sewing machines or for most e-textiles/wearables projects. However, the high conductivity and softness make it a great thread for making iPhone gloves!

Fitbit One Wireless Activity & Sleep Tracker – Like many out there, the Fitbit activity tracker gives you stats on your daily life – your stairs, steps, burned calories, and even sleep cycle are tracked. I like how the fitbit can be clipped in a variety of places like your pocket or bra, so you don’t have to wear it around your wrist. I found I was climbing between 30 and 40 flights per day, that is before I accidentally tossed fitbit in the wash (twice, actually… the first time, it survived).

iNecklace and iCufflinks – Sophisticated. Elegant. Open Source. The iNecklace and iCufflinks are made from gorgeously machined aluminum with subtle pulsating LEDs. Perfect for the playa or with Prada. This is a new type of product for Adafruit, we want to create wearable electronics that are subtle, classy and fun to wear.

The necklace pendant and cufflinks are CNC machined from the finest 6 series aluminum for durability and beauty. They feature a screw-in backing that allows easy access to the battery.

Bare Conductive Paint and craft kits-

Bare Conductive Paint is a multipurpose electrically conductive material perfect for all of your DIY projects! Bare Paint is water based, nontoxic and dries at room temperature. Available in a cool paint pen, they work the same way as glitter glue pens, and are designed for people of all ages to explore electronics, and learn about circuit making using a handy, easy-to-use format.

Ascii Heart <3 Necklace – Show that you <3 with this geeky necklace depicting an ASCII heart, like you’d see in email or text messages! The pieces are laser-cut in Sterling silver, then hand soldered to silver tubes that hang from the 20″ curb chain. The necklace is polished and has a high-shine finish and is treated to reduce tarnishing. The pendant measures 1.5″ square, and the two pieces dangle freely with a silver bead between them. This necklace makes a great gift for any special occasion, especially Valentine’s Day or for anyone who needs more <3 in their life.

SquareWear open source wearable electronics board-

SquareWear is an open-source microcontroller board specially designed for wearable electronics projects. It is small in size, low-cost, simple to use, and provides an all-in-one solution for wearable electronics projects. It builds on Microchip’s PIC18F14k50 mcu, and comes with a few different colors and two battery options. The coin version has a built-in 20mm coin battery holder and measures 1.6″x1.7″ in size; the li-po version uses an external li-po battery and measures only 1.6″x1.6″ in size.

Transistor Man Shirt – Did you know that inside every transistor is a little man whose job it is to watch the incoming base current and adjust the collector-emitter impedance to match the datasheet? It’s true! And now you can celebrate this hard-working guy with this fabulous Transistor Man tee shirt.

The front of the shirt has the legendary Transistor Man diagram from Horowitz & Hill’s “The Art of Electronics”. Not only did we get a blessing to make these from Cambridge Press, we even got a scan of the original artwork transparency from Professor Horowitz! These are without a doubt, the coolest NPN shirts we’ve ever seen.

LilyPad Development Simple Protosnap Kit – The ProtoSnap series is a new way to prototype your project without a breadboard. Everything is wired together on a single board, which makes it easy to explore the possibilities of the components before snapping them apart and building them into your project.

The ProtoSnap LilyPad Simple Development board is a great way to get started in programmable e-textiles. By combining a LilyPad Simple board with four LED boards and a buzzer, the ProtoSnap LilyPad Simple Development board gives you everything you need to learn the basics. The kit also includes our LilyPad FTDI basic for programming the Simple board, conductive thread and needles and a Li-Po battery pack. The board also includes two pads to connect sensors using alligator clips (or use as a nifty touch-sensor).

Circuit board necktie “Resistor” – How can you resist? Impress any guy (or girl!): computer scientist, programmer, electrician, engineer or maker who is proud to wear his nerdiness as a badge of honor. Is dad, grandpa, boyfriend or husband a tinkerer with solder and blinky things? Perfect for groomsmen and bride’s boys of the geeky persuasion. Nerd power!

This tie features a print of a vintage circuit board patterns. This is the 7th in the series from Bethany “Toybreaker” Shorb, CEO of Cyberoptix, no circuit bored here. (ha!). We have covered Bethany’s amazing work on Adafruit for years, and now we’re excited to be carrying her designs.

Embroidered Speaker Kit – Hannah Perner-Wilson makes these charming kits with everything you need to embroider your own soft speaker coil!

Conductive Fiber – Stainless Steel 20um – This solid stainless-steel conductive fiber is super interesting! It’s great for felting and could also be spun into yarn if that’s your thing. We tested many different fiber thicknesses for needle felting and found that this one (20um fiber thickness, 316L steel, straight fiber) is the most pleasurable to work with. Use about 0.2g of the stuff to make a felt touch button suitable for use with the MaKey MaKey or capacitive touch sensing circuit. Make felt controllers or felt buttons onto an existing wool sweater!

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Here are a few of my favorite Arduino Shields.  If you are building a wish list, or are looking for a good gift for an Arduino fan, you can’t go wrong with these.

Adafruit 1.8″ 18-bit Color TFT Shield w/microSD and Joystick - This lovely little shield is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display to any project. We took our popular 1.8″ TFT breakout board and remixed it into an Arduino shield complete with microSD card slot and a 5-way joystick navigation switch (with a nice plastic knob)! Since the display uses only 4 pins to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used easily to add a display & interface without exhausting the memory or pins.

Wayne & Layne’s Video Game Shield Kit – The Video Game Shield is an Arduino add-on shield to make your own video games, including graphics, text, sound effects, and music! Using the power of open source, this Shield includes everything you need to make awesome black-and-white video games on your TV. It supports up to two Nintendo Wii Nunchuck controllers for an easy and familiar interface.

Arduino WiFi Shield – The Arduino WiFi Shield connects your Arduino to the internet wirelessly. Connect it to your wireless network by following a few simple instructions and start controlling your world through the internet. As always with Arduino, every element of the platform – hardware, software and documentation – is freely available and open-source. This means you can learn exactly how it’s made and use its design as the starting point for your own circuits.

Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID Controller Shield for Arduino + Extras – We’ve taken our popular Adafruit PN532 breakout board and turned it into a shield – the perfect tool for any 13.56MHz RFID or NFC application. The Adafruit NFC shield uses the PN532 chip-set (the most popular NFC chip on the market) and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and ‘act’ like a NFC tag. If you want to do any sort of embedded NFC work, this is the chip you’ll want to use!

RGB LCD Shield Kit w/ 16×2 Character Display – Only 2 pins used! – This new Adafruit shield makes it easy to use a 16×2 Character LCD. We really like both the RGB positive and RGB negative LCDs that we stock in the shop. Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins; 6 to control the LCD and then another 3 to control the RGB backlight for a total of 9 pins. That’s half of the pins available on a classic Arduino!

Nootropic Design Video Experimenter Shield – an Arduino shield that lets you do all kinds of experiments with video.

• Overlay text and graphics onto a video signal from a camera, DVR, DVD player, VCR or any other source of composite video.
• Capture low-res video image frames for display or video processing. Give your Arduino the gift of sight!
• Perform object detection for computer vision projects.
• Decode NTSC closed captioning or XDS (extended data services) data embedded in television broadcasts.
• Works with NTSC (North America, parts of South America and Asia) or PAL (most of the rest of the world) television standards. For more info on what TV standards see the map here and this list of countries and their standards.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Happy shopping!

Adafruit Ultimate GPS – We carry a few different GPS modules here in the Adafruit shop, but none that satisfied our every desire – that’s why we designed this little GPS breakout board. We believe this is the Ultimate GPS module, so we named it that. It’s got everything you want and more.

FLORA Wearable Ultimate GPS Module – This module is the best way to add a GPS to your wearable project. It’s part of the Adafruit Flora series of wearable electronics, designed specifically for use with the Flora motherboard. Installed on the PCB is the latest of our Ultimate GPS modules, a small, super-thin, low power GPS module with built in data-logging capability! This module’s easy to use, but extremely powerful.

Geogram ONE – An open source tracking device that is packed with features.

• Quad Band GSM
• 66 Channel GPS based off the MT3339 Chipset
• Atmega328p with Arduino Bootloader preinstalled
• 6 axis digital accelerometer
• On board single cell lipo fuel gauge
• 6 pin FTDI connector for connecting optional FTDI cable
• USB conection for charging Lipo battery
• 4 Analog inputs (3 can be used as digital IO)
• 2 Digital IO lines

Cooking Hacks 3G + GPS shield for Arduino - The 3G + GPS shield for Arduino enables the connectivity to high speed WCDMA and HSPA cellular networks in order to make possible the creation of the next level of worldwide interactivity projects inside the new “Internet of Things” era.  The module counts also with an internal GPS what enables the location of the device outdoors and indoors combining standard NMEA frames with mobile cell ID triangulation using both assisted-mobile (A-GPS) and mobile-based (S-GPS) modes.  There is also a version that works with the Raspberry Pi!

Coobro Geo - an easy to assemble GPS navigation kit. Upload coordinates, turn it on, and the Coobro Geo will help you navigate to any destination on earth by using LEDs to show you the correct direction and distance remaining. Before you leave on your quest, press and hold the breadcrumbs button and the Coobro Geo will remember your location and help you navigate back. Store up to five pre-entered destination coordinates and five breadcrumbs, or modify the open source code and store as many coordinates as you want.  Use the Coobro Geo to help you find geocaches, store and navigate between hot fishing spots, complete a scavenger hunt, or simply help you find your car after a hike.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Gobble Gobble day is next week, which means the hotly anticipated (by us!) and dreaded (by you!) holiday shopping season is beginning.  Luckily for you we’re making it easier this year with our 2012 Adafruit Gift Guide series.  Each day until Christmas we’ll roll out a different theme, everything from wearable electronics to Arduino shields, from 3D printers to photography to gift certificates from sites Adafruit likes!

Happy shopping!

Fingerprint Sensor – Secure your project with biometrics – this all-in-one optical fingerprint sensor simplifies fingerprint-based security. These modules are typically used in safes – there’s a high powered DSP chip that does the image rendering, calculation, feature-finding and searching. Connect to any microcontroller or system with TTL serial, and send packets of data to take photos, detect prints, hash and search. You can also enroll new fingers directly – up to 162 finger prints can be stored in the onboard FLASH memory. There’s a red LED in the lens that lights up during a photo so you know it’s working.

Star Wars Science – Force Trainer – Train to move objects with your mind using the power of the force.  Yoda will train you through 15 levels of concentration to Jedi Mastery right from your home on planet earth.  Comes with an adjustable wireless headset and a learning guide to grow your telepathic strength.

Pulse Sensor Amped – Pulse Sensor Amped is a greatly improved version of the original Pulse Sensor, a plug-and-play heart-rate sensor for Arduino and Arduino compatibles. It can be used by students, artists, athletes, makers, and game & mobile developers who want to easily incorporate live heart-rate data into their projects.

Necomimi Brainwave Cat Ears – Have you ever wanted to confidently express yourself without talking? Now you can show the world what’s really on your mind without saying a word! Be the center of attention everywhere you go! People can’t help but watch in fascination as your Necomimi ears move in real-time according to your state of mind.

Genes in a Bottle Kit – From Bio-Rad, the leader in life science research, comes a kit that allows you to make your own invisible DNA visible in a matter of minutes! Dye your DNA precipitate and make a unique helix keepsake with your own DNA strands that you can show off to friends and family. Learn about the structure of DNA and cells as well as genetics and heredity. Continue your adventures into the remarkable world of what makes us all unique by learning about the double helix structure of your DNA. Using the ancient art of origami, you can color, cut, and fold paper to make a DNA model.

Biohacking skill badge, iron-on patch – You’ve done something amazing in the world of biohacking. Maybe you made and shared a low-cost DNA sequencer, or constructed your first genome. Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.

SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2012 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

UPS ground (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Wednesday 11am ET – December 19, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 20, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 21, 2012 – Arrive on 12/24/2012.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 17, 2012. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, New Year’s Day, no UPS pickup or delivery service.

United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority (USA orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012 – Arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 23, 2012. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/12.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 14, 2012. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2012 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!

Adafruit Industries Gift Certificate
A cyber-present for the electronics geek in you life! Make sure to note the recipient’s name, email address and any message in the “comments” box at checkout. Give the gift of Adafruit electronics, open source hardware and more!

Give the Gift of GitHub
Our favorite way to share code can also be gifted! You can sponsor paid GitHub accounts for all the hard workers contributing to open source projects. What a great idea!

Instructables pro account
Give the gift of an Instructables pro account – the biggest and best show-and-tell site on the planet! We use a pro account here at Adafruit and love it.

Maker Shed Gift Certificate
Can’t decide what to get your favorite Maker, Crafter or Hacker? Give them a gift certificate good for anything from the Maker Shed with the amount you choose. And best yet, you can choose to email it to them and avoid those long postal deliveries (Recommended). A great last minute present that could spark a lifetime of making!

Ponoko gift vouchers
Give the gift of making! All you need to do is decide how much you’d like to give, we can put together a combination of vouchers below to that amount. Simply send an email to service-at-ponoko-dot-com with the details, including the email address you use for PayPal. We’ll then put through a PayPal Payment Request, and once that’s paid, we’ll send the vouchers to you as PDFs.

Seeed Studios gift certificate
X’ mas and new year is coming, Seeed Studio Gift Certificates is on special! Purchase Gift Certificates now for 20% off, you can purchase as many as you want, send them to someone as a GIFT, or use with your own order.  Each unit can be redeemed for 1 USD. For example, you pay 80 USD (100 Units)  but 100 USD will be added to your account balance. The special will be expired on 26th, Dec.

SparkFun Gift Certificate
SparkFun Gift Certificates are entirely virtual. Enter the amount you wish to purchase on this page and add it to your cart. Once you’ve placed your order and your payment has been confirmed, the Gift Certificate money is yours to distribute as you see fit.

TechShop Gift Certificate (membership)
Not exactly a gift certificate, but you can buy a membership for a friend, family member or yourself! Get access to nearly $500,000 worth of tools, machines, 2d and 3D design software, and professional equipment for around $125 per month.

ThinkGeek Gift Certificate
Available in 8 different amounts, (ranging from $10 to $150) Gift Certificates are e-mailed to the recipient as a code that is entered when that person comes to the ThinkGeek site and places his/her order. If you already have a ThinkGeek account, you can go directly to this page to order a gift certificate.

Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate
Trossen Robotics Gift Certificate, if you’re in to robotics, Trossen is one of the top distributor of hobby and educational robotics in the United States.

United Nuclear gift certificate
Looking for some Uranium? These folks have it. From radioactive samples to chemistry sets, this is one of the most unique, amazing online stores.

Others you *can* give which are not exactly gift certificates but can be sent “in the name of” are donations to the EFF, Tor Project and Engineers without Borders.

Missing from our list, but what what we would like to see:

• Digi-Key Gift Certificate
• Jameco Gift Certificate
• McMaster-Carr Gift Certificate
• Mouser Gift Certificate
• MakerBot Gift Certificate
• Parallax Gift Certificate (!)
• Pololu Gift Certificate

It’s your turn, which gift certificates are you giving this year, which ones did we miss? *And* which gift certificates do not exist that you’d like to give?

Today’s guide – Photo gift guide for makers, hackers and more – Part Deuce: Editing and Sharing Photos! Make sure to check out part one (Taking Photos gift guide for makers, engineers & more – AN ADAFRUIT ELECTRONICS GIFT GUIDE)!

Dedicated Hard Drive (Prices vary by size — numerous vendors)

It’s a wise idea to keep all your photos on a dedicated hard drive, physically separate from your OS and applications. Store all your originals and edits on this drive, and don’t use it for anything else. At least once a year, you should buy a new one, copy the most recent photos onto it, then remove and store the original in a secure place (like a safe or safe-deposit box at a bank). These are your original photos, so you should take care of them.

If your going the safe deposit box route, consider buying a smaller 2.5″ laptop harddrive, which takes up less space. Remember that this drive is only used for storing and loading photos, and not for constant use, so you can get away with a 5400RPM model that has a smaller cache.

Color Calibration Package ($130, B&H Photo and Video)

Your monitor sucks. Well, maybe it doesn’t suck, but it’s not as good as it could be. If you’re going to be editing photos, or even if you’re just staring at the screen for long periods of time (can you say EagleCAD?), you should get one of these.

A calibrated monitor is indispensable when it comes to editing photos. On their own, most monitors have a very strong blue-to-green color cast along with poor tone and color rendition. A monitor calibrator analyzes the output of the monitor against a fixed standard, generates a corrected profile, and gives this information to your video card, where it is applied to the output.

The corrected color and tone mean that things look more like they’re supposed to, whether it’s photos you’re editing, movies you are watching, or whatever. If you spend a lot of time in applications, you’ll find a calibrated display is easier to look at, because the greys and whites of the windows actually look grey and white.

Be warned: the first few times you use a calibrated monitor, the greys and whites will look reddish, because you’re used to a blue-tinted display. But eventually, you’ll wonder how you ever got on without one.

Tablet – Wacom Intuos Large 8×12 Tablet ($499 list, B&H Photo and Video)

These things are great for photo editing, as well as drafting in CAD software. Fair warning though: if you use one in public, you will be “that guy”.

Adobe Photoshop

What can I even say about Photoshop? What was once just a proper noun has become a verb and an adjective. Photoshop r0cks! There’s very few closed-source software packages I actually like, but I have to say that Photoshop is one of the best programs I have ever used, and one of the few programs I actually think is worth what you pay for it. GIMP is very nice, but I still have to recommend Photoshop. Sorry, Stallman.

RAW processing software:

Adobe Lightroom ($299 direct download from Adobe)

Apple Aperture ($199 direct download from Apple)

For processing of RAW images, I use Adobe Lightroom. Now, to be fair, I have a PC, so I sorta have to use it. If I had a Mac (or a Hackintosh), I would seriously consider Aperture, because it’s an excellent program too (and $100 cheaper). I used to use Photoshop to convert files from RAW, but since I started using Lightroom I find I do 90% of my work in half the time, and I only use PS for more involved editing. If I just have to color-correct, crop, and downsize I can do all of that in LR.

Noise-reduction software: Noise Ninja ($69 – direct download from PictureCode)

Both Lightroom and Aperture have good noise reduction capabilities, but if you’re dealing with serious noise, you need a specialized kind of software. The aptly named Noise Ninja does just that. It works on all kinds of noise — B&W film grain, color film grain, luminance and color noise, and they have an ever-expanding library of camera noise profiles to choose from.

ExpressCard Card Reader ($24 – B&H Photo and Video)

If you take a lot of photos, you need one of these. I used to use a USB 2.0 card reader, which transferred data at about 4-5 Mb/S. Then I got one of these. It routinely transfers at over 20 Mb/S. Very handy when you have a few 8 Gig cards to download. The model pictured above is for CompactFlash cards. There are models available for SD cards (“11-in-1″ models), but I’ve never used them, so I can’t recommend them. But chances are if your laptop is less than 3 years old, it already has an SD card reader built in.

Flickr Pro account ($25/year from Flickr)

I thought Web 2.0 was supposed to be free? Yeah… no.

But a Flickr Pro account is one of the few website subscriptions that are actually worth it. If you take a lot of photos and share them, you should consider it. It’s great for sharing your projects because you can organize all your photos and videos in one place, share a slideshow and label stuff for documentation.

Costco Membership ($50.00 – Costco)

Believe it or not, one of the best places to print your photos is at Costco. Yes, I am serious. Costco has very good lab facilities and very reasonable prices for prints. The one near me (which I use regularly) runs one of the cleanest c-print lines I’ve ever seen. Even better, most locations put their printer profiles online so you can be sure they’ll look right when you send them to print. You can upload your photos via their website and pick them up in a few hours, or have them mailed to you. It’s a pretty good deal.

Also, have you tried their olive oil? It’s fantastic!

Have other suggestions? Post up in the comments!

Today’s Adafruit Gift Guide is all about taking photos. Some great gear to help you take photos of your projects so you can share what you do best with the world.

Advanced Point-and-Shoot — Canon PowerShot G12 ($500, B&H Photo & Video)

SLRs are great things, but they are expensive, particularly when you add in the cost of lenses. And the higher end ones are somewhat bulky, heavy, and awkward to carry. If you want something smaller, lighter, and more portable that still takes great photos, look in to one of these:

Canon PowerShot G12 — The latest in the venerable “G”-series from Canon. Like the G11 before it, the G12 is 10 megapixels, down from the G10′s 14-megapixels. This is not a bad thing. It’s a lower pixel count, but the same sized sensor, so each sensing element is bigger, resulting in much lower noise. 10-megapixels is more than enough resolution to make an 8×10 print, and it’s massive overkill for pictures on the web. Coupled to this 10mpix sensor is the DIGIC-4 processor, which further reduces noise.

One of the hallmarks of the G-series has always been the excellent glass, and the G12 has a superb f/2.8 lens equipped with image-stabilization, including a neat hybrid mode which further reduces blur when taking closeups.

Finally, the G12 adds the ability to shoot 720p HD video with sound, which makes it even handier for documenting your projects.

This is a neat little setup for taking photos of small objects. It comes with a tripod too, which is probably a good source of cheap aluminum (I wouldn’t put a camera on it though). If you already have lights, you can purchase the table seperately ($310). If you already have a table, you might want to check out this nice SV photoflood light kit ($399).

Canon 430EX-II shown

Every major camera manufacture makes dedicated speedlights. Speedlights, also known as “shoe flashes”, are portable flash units that mount on top of the camera. In modern cameras, these speedlights work with metering systems that are integrated into the camera, to ensure good exposures every time. Many of them can also be used wirelessly, communicating with the camera via an optical signaling system. While ostensibly designed for DSLR’s, they will work with any camera that has a hot shoe, like the G12 shown above. Bear in mind that to utilize the advanced metering system, you should get the flash from the same manufacturer as your camera.

I love these little guys — they’re the only lights I use now. LadyAda uses them too! They’re well made, reliable, not too expensive. Granted, there are less expensive generic monolights out there, but I’ve never found any of them to be as durable as the Bees. And the customer service from Paul C. Buff, the manufacturer, is excellent. I also like that they offer a full line of accessories which are equally well made.

Another point to consider is that it’s very easy to make your own modifiers. Unlike many light systems, which use a flange/bayonet system for mounting things to the light, the Bees use a a simple spring clamp, which fits inside a 3.5″ circle. If you want to attach your own modifiers, just cut the appropriately-sized hole in them with a hole saw and clamp them on.

There are three models of lights that share this form factor: the B400 above, the B800, and the B1600. The only difference between them is light output. The 400 puts out plenty of light for shooting things like products on a table or headshots, but consider upgrading to a B800 or B1600 if you plan to do large group portraits or use a large softbox (softboxes absorb a LOT of light).

Great for shooting small stuff on a tabletop, and particularly useful for shooting video. The reflectors can be used to bounce light back into a scene and to provide fill light. You can use the disc without a reflective covering as a diffuser, or use it with a cover to cast a shadow. You can also mount a speedlight on the boom arm to put a light source in an otherwise difficult spot.

You can buy one good tripod for $270 and keep it for life, or you can buy a crappy $99 tripod every few years when your old one breaks.

Never can have enough memory cards. Larger ones (8GB+) are handy if you use your camera to shoot video. For shooting stills, I usually stick to 4GB cards — spreading the data out over multiple cards is good insurance in case one goes bad.

Keep an eye out for deals on these around the holidays — sometimes you can get them with free shipping or at a discount.

A handy way to carry your camera, your tripod, and your laptop (or your iPad, or whatever) , plus another compartment for the rest of your stuff.

Finding gifts for your family members and friends can be tough. Sure you love to solder, tinker, and write code, but maybe your grandma or dad can’t tell a resistor from an LED. Here are several gifts you can make: either kits you assemble/personalize or projects that are fun to make and give.

Holiday Gift Guide 2010: Gifts you can make.

In this guide, we look at tools that are both fantasy wish list specials and practical tools that have stood the test of repeated use. Some are sexy and expensive, others more homely and affordable. We think every one of them is a winner as a potential gift for that active maker in your life — or for those who dream of more time for making, one acquired fetish object at a time.

Holiday Gift Guide 2010: Tools for Makers

You’ve probably been fantasizing about getting amazing gifts this December, like robots with servo-mounted laser pointers and authentic battle damage. It’s time to realize that it’s unlikely that this will happen. Stay calm. You can still get sweet hacky things if you just forward this gift-giving guide to your friends and loved ones. Join us after the break to see what we want and be sure to let us know what you’ve got your eye on.

2010 Hacker Gift Guide

Previously we released a nice guide which has many of the popular & useful iPhone apps for the electronics enthusiast. We’re back with another, this time – the iPad. The “pickins’ are slim” as they say but there are some pretty good ones. To give them as gift to the iPad toting’ electronics person in your life you can give them an iTunes gift card.

In addition to the apps we’ve also included a new set of PDFs from MAKE – they recently released MAKE for devices that can read PDFs so we think that’s an extremely nice gift one could give this holiday season for the iPad toting’ engineer, student, tinkerer and more! We suggest buying the PDFs and putting them on a SD card to save and to give!

DCircuit Lab HD. DCircuit Lab HD is a tool for simulating combinatorial and sequential digital circuits.

Electronic Toolbox HD – iPad Edition. Electronic Toolbox combines electronic reference material with calculation and conversion tools in one handy app. Whether a professional or hobbyist, the app gives users a collection of the most important electrical information right at their fingertips.

Ohm’s Calculator allows you to enter any two values of resistance, amperage, voltage, or power and receive the remaining two values via Ohm’s Law.

Scientific Electronics Circuit Calculator for iPad. This collection of electronics circuit calculators has been designed especially for the iPad.

Electricity Electronics Magnetism. Hx Electricity, Electronics, Magnetism: This encyclopedia is about the discovery of three phenomena that have evolved the way we live and without which many of the benefits and amenities of today did not exist, will learn from their discovery, scientists, and how this tool has been used now and in history.

PDF versions of MAKE. Every volume of MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of the technology in your life. MAKE is a celebration of your right to tweak, hack, and bend technology to your will. And now, you can take that party with you on whatever device supports PDF! The PDF version of MAKE is available for only $9.99, and our 4-volume annual box sets are just $35.99. This is a great opportunity to pick up hard-to-find or out-of-print back issues.

If you have any app (or content) suggestions, post up in the comments!

It seems a lot of folks have iPhones and many of them like making and learning about electronics too! We’ve put together some of our picks of apps for the iPhone for that special person (or yourself) this holiday season that would like the gift tronic’ apps! Some of the apps are free, most are $0.99 cents. To give them as gift to the iPhone toting’ electronics person in your life you can give them an iTunes gift card. For today only the MintyBoost is is 10% – it charges the iPhone Use code IPHONE on checkout and get 10% off the MintyBoost kit!

Resistulator. What would a resistor value calculator look like if it were thought through — made a breeze to use, yet also helpful for learning the color code? Resistulator displays the stated resistance of both standard and precision resistors as you set each band’s color with a tap. A preference is provided if you’d like to be shown the terse value description used in many areas of the world.

Circuit Lab is an electronic circuit analysis tool based on the modified node analysis method. The analysis may be under DC conditions and under steady-state sinusoidal conditions (AC). Diodes (non linear devices) may be analyzed only under DC conditions.

Electronic Toolbox combines electronic reference material with calculation and conversion tools in one handy app. Whether a professional or hobbyist, the app gives users a collection of the most important electrical information right at their fingertips.

CapCalc will help you determine capacitance values and related capacitor codes. Simply enter one of either picofarad, nanofarad, microfarad or the capacitor code and CapCalc will generate the other values for you!

Bitwise is a binary comparing calculator for teaching and explaining how logic circuits work. Set the switched of the first and second binary numbers then choose a function for instant result. I made this app to help visually describe how binary logic works.

The Circuit Pro App is a utility application developed to assist electrical engineers and electricians with the task of sizing branch circuits according the National Electrical Code (NEC). This application finds the appropriately sized standard breaker size based on the input circuit load, which can be entered in either Amps or kiloWatts.

EE Basics contains a large selection of Electrical Engineering laws, equations, tables and reference material that Electrical Engineers may find useful during their work.

The elecPuzzles app allows you to test your knowledge of some basic electronic circuits. Perform the necessary calculations to solve problems presented to you.

With “Electric Circuits” you can learn the basics of a home circuit. You’ll learn by playing: every level brings up new components, making more difficult to create your “Electric Circuit”. It’s pretty basic and missing parts that we think would round it out, but it’s still fun.

Maxim Part Selector. The IC Selector helps electronics designers choose the right Maxim data converter (A/D and D/A converters) anywhere. The app doesn’t require a live Internet connection, so it can be used at the lab bench or anywhere else.

Digi-Key’s app for the iPhone and iPod Touch is the design engineer’s passkey to one of the world’s largest inventories of in-stock electronic components.

For today only the MintyBoost is is 10% – it charges the iPhone Use code IPHONE on checkout and get 10% off the MintyBoost kit! If you have any app suggestions, post up in the comments!

Is there a special person in your life that likes (or wants) to make PCBs? Making your own printed circuit boards is a gift that keeps on giving. We’re thrilled to have the first ever PCB maker gift guide, enjoy! We are not affiliated with any of the links/companies, feel free to search around for the best deals and highest quality.

Drill bit set. You’ll need these for drilling vias and holes.

10pcs of 1.00mm (.0394). These Mirco Drill Bits are made of Tungsten Carbide. The over all length is 1.50″. The shanks have a diameter of .1250 and all have identification rings on them. These are for drilling PCB holes.

5pcs of .50mm (.0197). These Mirco Drill Bits are made of Tungsten Carbide. The over all length is 1.50″. The shanks have a diameter of .1250 and all have identification rings on them. These are for drilling vias.

All these Drill Bits are made of Tungsten Carbide. The over all length is 1.50″. The shanks have a diameter of .1250 and all have identification rings on them. An assortment!

Dremel 220-01 Rotary Tool Work Station. Ideal for crafts, hobbies, metal working, and a variety of around-the-house jobs, the 220-01 Dremel Work Station transforms any Dremel rotary tool into a tabletop drill press. It can be bolted on to your workbench, and it has the versatility to operate as a tool holder, flex shaft holder, and drill press.

Dremel 300-1/24 300 Series Variable-Speed Rotary Tool Kit. Perfect for the do-it-yourselfer or anyone who is new to rotary tools, the Dremel 300-1/24 Variable-Speed Rotary Kit helps you complete a wide range of household, fine art, and repair projects. The rotary tool itself features an updated design for optimum comfort and control, as well as variable-speed control that allows you to set the speed of the tool to match specific accessories or tasks. The versatile rotary tool comes with a case, 24 accessories, and a circle cutter attachment–so you’re ready to tackle whatever project you dream up next.

Press & Peel – some people like to use magazines or other glossy paper. We kinda just like press-n-peel blue. Others like Pulsar.

PCB! Copper clad single sided is good to start, For beginners we suggest CEM which is not as strong as FR4 so its easier to cut and drill.

Dowel – piece of wood! This technique really helped us get great transfers without a machine.

Tin snips – get the ‘straight’ yellow handled ones from any hardware store. Great for cutting PCBs.

Photo supplies are very good for storage and etching: Developer trays & tongs – pour your etchant into these plastic trays. we have a few we keep around. Use these bamboo tongs to grab stuff in the etchant so you never have to put your hands in bottles.

Have others? Share them in the comments!

GIFTS FOR THE REVERSE ENGINEER – AN ADAFRUIT ELECTRONICS GIFT GUIDE

ARM development gift guide – AN ADAFRUIT ELECTRONICS GIFT GUIDE

LASER ETCHED LEATHERMAN TOOLS – AN ADAFRUIT GIFT GUIDE.

Gifts for the live video internet broadcaster – AN ADAFRUIT GIFT GUIDE

All these and more, in our gift guide section!

This gift guide is for that special person in your life who not only wants a Leatherman tool BUT they deserve one with a more personalized touch. We’ve rounded up all the laser etched Leathermans that we know of, post ones we didn’t spot in the comments!

Radioshack! This mini Multitool puts the power of nine tools in your pocket. This compact tool strips wire, cuts wire, contains spring-action pliers, screwdrivers, a knife, wood/metal file, tweezers, a bottle opener and has a key ring attachment.

The Adafruit “midnight hacker” is a Leatherman Squirt ES4 and a very handy, unique key-chain size multi-tool. The E4 sets you up with 20GA, 18GA, 16GA, 14GA and 12GA wire strippers and electrical wire cutters to handle all kinds of precise jobs. The gripping edges on the ES4′s spring-action pliers help you get a firm grasp on fuses, small cables, and many hard-to-reach items.

A Leatherman Squirt, Engineer Series, roughly 2.5 inches in length when compacted and 4 inches when wire-stripper tool is in use. they’ve engraved their logo and toll-free telephone number onto the tool to make this handy tool a crafty keepsake item.

MAKE: Warranty Voider – The new Squirt PS4 is small enough to fit on your key chain, this pliers version now also comes with built in scissors! The MAKE: Warranty Voider is the perfect companion for mobile fixing, hacking and MacGyvering. This is a limited offering with custom “MAKE: Warranty Voider” laser etched on its side (plier version also available).

Make: Open Sourcerer – Durability and handiness to the max make the Leatherman CS4 the essential compact folding tool for tinkerers, makers and outdoor enthusiasts alike. This is the “MEGA” version of our popular Make: Warranty Voider, the “Make: Open Sourcerer” Leatherman Juice CS4 Tool is bigger, beefier and meant to go on long trips & tougher jobs. Become a sorcerer of opening things with the only tool you’ll ever need – the Make: Open Sourcerer!

MAKE: Bomb Defuser – The new Squirt ES4 is small enough to fit on your key chain, this mini wire strippers version now also comes with built in scissors! The MAKE: Bomb Defuser is the perfect companion for mobile fixing, hacking and MacGyvering.

MAKE: Circuit Breaker – The new Squirt ES4 is small enough to fit on your key chain, this mini wire strippers version now also comes with built in scissors!

This gift guide is for that hacker, cracker, tinkerer, engineer and scientist who likes to take things apart and figure things out. These tools are a great start if you’re looking to reverse engineer or “hack” something like the Xbox Kinect. We’re about to do just that and help folks along with the “Open Kinect” project, here are some of the tools we like and use – all make great gifts this holiday season!

We sell one of the items in our list, the Bus Pirate – for today only it’s 10% off – use the code PIRATE on check out or you can add it to your Adafruit wishlist!

Beagle USB 480 Protocol Analyzer. The Beagle™ USB 480 Protocol Analyzer is a low cost, non-intrusive High-speed USB 2.0 bus monitor that now includes real-time USB class-level decoding. The Beagle USB 480 analyzer is capable of capturing, and interactively displaying high-speed USB bus-states and traffic in real-time with timing at 16.7 ns resolution and comes complete with software and royalty-free API. Thanks to an on-board 64 MB buffer, sustained bursts of 480 Mbps traffic can be captured with no loss of data.

Interested in an even lower-cost USB analyzer? The Beagle USB 12 Protocol Analyzer is a low- and full-speed USB analyzer for $400.

HACKING THE XBOX. An Introduction to Reverse Engineering by Andrew “bunnie” Huang
This hands-on guide to hacking was cancelled by the original publisher, Wiley, out of fear of DMCA-related lawsuits. After a period of direct distribution by the author, “Hacking the Xbox” is brought to you by the No Starch Press. The book begins with a few step-by-step tutorials on hardware modifications that teaches basic hacking techniques as well as essential reverse engineering skills. The book progresses into a discussion of the Xbox security mechanisms and other advanced hacking topics, with an emphasis on educating the readers on the important subjects of computer security and reverse engineering. Hacking the Xbox  includes numerous practical guides, such as where to get hacking gear, soldering techniques, debugging tips and an Xbox hardware reference guide.

”Hacking the Xbox” confronts the social and political issues  facing today’s hacker. The book introduces readers to the humans behind the hacks through several interviews with master hackers. 

”Hacking the Xbox” looks forward and discusses the impact of today’s legal challenges on legitimate reverse engineering activities. The book includes a chapter written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) about the rights and responsibilities of hackers, and concludes by discussing the latest trends and vulnerabilities in secure PC platforms.

Tools from iFixit – Depending on what you’re taking apart, and how difficult the manufacturer has made it – you’ll need some very specialized tools. One the smartest things we’ve seen is how iFixit publishes their zero-day gadget tear downs *and* has links to the tools you’ll need to take said gadget apart. The tool sales is a great business model for them and helpful for the folks looking to take apart the latest i-device that needs some weird torx screwdriver or putty knife.

Wiha screwdriver set. Chip Lifter with Standard Handle and these. We’re using Octopart links because the Wiha site doesn’t seem to allow us to link directly easily.

Bus Pirate. Interfacing a new microchip can be a hassle. Breadboarding a circuit, writing code, hauling out the programmer, or maybe even prototyping a PCB. We never seem to get it right on the first try. The ‘Bus Pirate’ is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips. Many serial protocols are supported at 0-5.5volts, more can be added. Adafruit is the official US distributor of Ian Lesnet’s Bus Pirate, each purchase directly supports Dangerous Prototypes!

E-Z-Micro-Hooks models: X2105, XKM, XK… E-Z-Hook offers micro-hooks in a selection of double hook or double gripper models. All of these micro hooks have a narrow body design ideal for use where side by side connections are required. Our most popular of the double hook styles is the XKM, and our smallest is the X2015. Only the XK is available with factory installed leads, but all have connection pins for easy lead assembly

Cheap scanner. Pick up a cheap scanner to scan circuit boards, it really doesn’t matter which one. Scanning them make it easier to make notes, draw circuits and share the images with others.

Hakko hot air tool. Great for removing components.
Perfect for soldering and desoldering small surface-mount components, shrinking tubing, heating tests and other local heating operations – adjustable temperature control from 100°C to 540°C (212°F to 1004°F), ultra-light setting for air volume control & ESD safe by design.

Have a good one? Post up in the comments! We sell one of the items in our list, the Bus Pirate – for today only it’s 10% off – use the code PIRATE on check out or you can add it to your Adafruit wishlist!

The Beagle Board is a low-power, low-cost single-board computer produced by Texas Instruments in association with Digi-Key. The Beagle Board was designed with open source development in mind, and as a way of demonstrating the Texas Instrument’s OMAP3530 system-on-a-chip. The board was developed by a small team of TI engineers.

The LPC1343 is a low-power, 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microprocessor designed specifically for embedded devices. This is a fully assembled version of the LPC1343 Reference Design from talented Parisian designer, Microbuilder. No soldering required (female header pins are pre-soldered onto the board), this devboard is ready to go out of the box.

Please note that while there are some great introductory getting-started tutorials for this board, its best used by those with microcontroller experience. If you’ve played with AVR or PICs and are intrigued by the low cost and ultra fast 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 series, this is the dev board to get! If you’re just getting started with microcontrollers and electronics you should check out the Arduino which is very beginner-friendly.

In addition to publishing the schematics and layout files, MicroBuilder has written a full software library for the LPC1300 family. This allows you to quickly get started with all on-board peripherals, so you can focus on your own application functionality. The software library includes complete GCC-based startup code and details on setting up an ARM development environment using open source tools. Along with a standard Makefile, project files for the open-source CodeLite C/C++ IDE and the commercial GCC-based Crossworks for ARM are provided.

Within minutes, you’ll be using the USB interface for printf() debugging, reading from the analog inputs using analogRead(), tweaking pins without having to look up registers, etc. and best of all no ARM or JTAG programmer is required! The chip comes with a built in USB bootloader that appears as a very small disk drive. To reprogram, simply press the Bootload button and drag your new firmware file into the USB drive that appears. Then press Reset and your code is running. Is that cool or what?

Check it!

• Power the board via the 2.1mm DC jack (6-12V) or the mini-B USB connector (5V). There’s an onboard 3.3V regulator (LT1113)
• Debugging LED on pin 2.10 and SWD connectors for programming and debugging
• Open source toolchain (GPL) and software library (BSD)
• USB 2.0 HID and Mass Storage support built right into the ROM
• 32K of flash, 8K of SRAM…running at 72 MHz
• Built-into-ROM USB bootloader works with any computer and OS
• Full Speed USB, TTL UART, SPI and I2C interfaces
• Up to 42 General Purpose I/O (GPIO) pins with configurable pull-up/pull-down resistors
• 8 10-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter pins
• Four general purpose counter/timers with a total of four capture inputs and 13 match outputs
• Programmable WatchDog Timer (WDT)
• System tick timer for ez timekeeping
• LPC1343 datasheet has a lot of information about this chip

We don’t include a power supply, USB cable or proto-board…but we do toss in some bumpers.

Segger J-Link for ARM (EDU Edition)
This is the Swiss-Army Knife of HW debuggers for ARM, supporting the classic JTAG interface used by ARM7/ARM9 and more importantly the new-and-improved(TM) SWD interface native to all ARM Cortex chips (M0, M3, M4, etc.). If you are a non-commercial user or hobbiest, this is by and far the best deal out there for the most flexible ARM HW debuggers on the market. Supports on-the-go programming of supported ARM chips, step-through-debugging, etc., using all the major IDEs (Keil uVision, IAR, Crossworks for ARM [Windows-only], and also include GDB Server software that can be used on Windows for debugging with GCC and open-source ARM toolchains like Yagarto). At 49€ VAT included in Europe and $60 in North America it’s a no-brainer if your serious about working with ARM.

The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M3 (2nd Edition)
The go-to book for anyone seriously interested in using one of the many new Cortex M3-based chips that are popping up everywhere. The book is accessible, and also includes a lot of examples aimed at open-source GCC-based toolchains for ARM. Be sure to get the second edition since it has a number of important updates and includes information on the Cortex-M0 (low-cost, low-power) as well.

Chumby Hacker Board
While actually programming the 454MHz ARM9-based iMX.233 processor directly in C gets messy pretty quick, the Chumby Hacker Boards takes all the really dreary work off your hands and lets you start developing in the relative comfort of Linux without too much work on your part (other than the inevitable Linux learning curve if you’re new to it). At $90 it’s also a pretty amazing deal (especially compared to the price of the official iMX.233 development board from Freescale!). This is definitely approaching the deep-end of the pool for ARM, but it’s probably a bit more accessible than something like a BeagleBoard. Cheers to Chumby Industries and Bunnie for making this great little board possible and at such a reasonable price.

C Programming Language (Kernighan and Ritchie)
If you’re going to be doing anything with ARM, it will probably be in C (or maybe C++ on the high-end), and the original book is probably still the most accessible. Amidst the thousands of IT and programming books published every years, this one stand out for it’s clarity and emminent readability. If you’re just getting started with C, or need a bit of brushing up, this is probably the best investment you can make both in terms of time and money. (If you just want a quick refresher, O’Reilly’s “C Pocket Reference” is very handy as well in an easy to transport size.

You can see more of the Adafruit gift guides here.

Computer – We like to use a pretty fast MacBook pro. We’ve tried to use other systems but a beefy Mac seems to be able to encode and use various types of assets the best. We’re using a 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8 GB of RAM. Camera support is the only thing that can be a little tricky, but we’ve found that most PC cameras work and our USB microscope works great once we installed the drivers. We like portable systems because we need to move the computer all around our shop and once and awhile we broadcast from events.

Camera – We use the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema. It can do up to 720p HD, has auto-focus, mic built in and works fine with our Mac. We have two, one for people and one we put inside the pick and place when we do live assembly video broadcasts during the week.

USB Microscope – In addition to a camera for the main action we like to use a USB Microscope camera for closeups. We currently use the 413 Dino-Lite. It has a high resolution of 1,3 megapixel and an adjustable magnification of appr. 10 to 70 times as well as 200x. This model also provides the possibility to calibrate the microscope for measurements. Most used model in the industrial field – you’ll need to install their drivers for it to work with a Mac.

Camera tripod – Any will do, we like ones that are very adjustable since we’re usually putting the camera in odd places like on top of laser cutters, in between reels in the pick and place and more.

Broadcasting software – We tried them all but we currently like Ustream Producer Pro the best. You can start out with the free version and see if it fits your needs, we wanted lots of control of photos, additional videos, multiple cameras, picture in picture, overlays, HD, auto-broadcast to iPhones/iPads and mobile devices like Android phones.

Faster Internet connection – Until recently we had “regular ole’” Time Warner cable with “speed boost” – each week we struggled with broadcasting “basic quality” – but now we’ve moved up to Time Warner business class with 50 down and 5 up. Now we’re broadcasting in HD each week. If you or someone in your life wants to give a gift of time, get them the fastest connection possible. It’s great for content creators.

Vimeo Plus account – We use the Ustream service to broadcast but the recording feature doesn’t work that well for us – plus we like to add the chat along side the video. Each week we (with our video producer George) record the shows, edit them to include the text chat and upload the video to our Vimeo plus account. You get: Unlimited HD Embedding, Advanced Statistics for Vimeo Plus, 1080p playback and AVCHD support, Mobile conversion and about 5GB of uploads per week. We like Vimeo because the player looks the best, there aren’t any ads in the videos and so far it’s worked out for us. Blip.tv and a pro account with them is also a great choice.

One black house cat – nuff’ said.

Have more? Post up in the comments! And, you can see more of the Adafruit gift guides here.

If you, a friend, or a loved one or family member wants to take an electronic project to the next level, the WIRELESS level – Xbee is a fantastic choice! What is Xbee? XBee modems are one of the easiest ways to create a wireless point-to-point or mesh network. They have error correction, are configured with AT commands, come in multiple flavors and can create a wireless serial link out of the box! We like to use them with Arduinos or with projects like wireless power meters.

Some time ago we wanted to make a wireless Arduino project but all the adapter boards on the market were not that good. So we designed what we think is an excellent low-cost adapter board – we also carry a variety of products for getting started with Xbee, and that’s what this guide is all about! The Xbee gift guide!

If you’re giving Xbees as a gift before to consider that you usually need 2 Xbees and 2 adapters (and a cable or 2)…

For the products we stock we conveniently included our “add to wishlist” button! For today only the products we sell in this gift guide are 10% off (use code XBEE) on checkout.

Building Wireless Sensor Networks: with ZigBee, XBee, Arduino, and Processing by Robert Faludi
This book should be out soon! You can get “rough cuts” access now – Get ready to create distributed sensor systems and intelligent interactive devices using the ZigBee wireless networking protocol and XBee radios. By the time you’re halfway through this fast-paced, hands-on guide, you’ll have built a series of useful projects, including a complete ZigBee wireless network that delivers remotely sensed data. Radio networking is creating revolutions in volcano monitoring, performance art, clean energy, and consumer electronics. By following the examples in each chapter, you’ll learn how to tackle inspiring projects of your own. This resource- and reference-packed book is perfect for inventors, hackers, crafters, students, hobbyists, and scientists.

XBee Module. This is a XBee 802.15.4 protocol 1mW wireless module, good for point-to-point, multipoint and convertible to a mesh network point. There are nearly a dozen different types of xbees. We just carry this one (its the best for all-around wireless communication) If you need others we suggest buying direct from Mouser/Digikey, see here for more details. Please note we used to carry the chip antenna, but now have the wire antenna version. Its the same price but 50% more range because of the improved antenna, awesome!

XBee Adapter kit
This adapter board is designed to make adding wireless point-to-point or mesh networking easy. We looked at all the XBee adapter boards available and decided to design something better. The kit includes a PCB and all components necessary to build the adapter, unassembled. Tools are not included. This kit is really easy and will only take 15 minutes to build, even if you’ve never soldered before.

Arduino Xbee Shield. The Xbee shield allows an Arduino board to communicate wirelessly using Zigbee. It is based on the Xbee module from MaxStream. The module can communicate up to 100 feet indoors or 300 feet outdoors (with line-of-sight). It can be used as a serial/usb replacement or you can put it into a command mode and configure it for a variety of broadcast and mesh networking options. The shields breaks out each of the Xbee’s pins to a through-hole solder pad. It also provides female pin headers for use of digital pins 2 to 7 and the analog inputs, which are covered by the shield (digital pins 8 to 13 are not obstructed by the shield, so you can use the headers on the board itself).

USB XBee Adapter
This low cost XBee USB Adapter Board comes in partially assembled kit form and provides a cost-effective solution to interfacing a PC or microcontroller to any XBee or XBee Pro module. The PC connection can be used to configure the XBee Module through Digi’s X-CTU software. By using this adapter board you can provide an easy interface to the XBee or XBee Pro modules by converting the 2mm pin spacing to breadboard friendly 0.100″ spacing. The adapter board also provides a means to connect pluggable wires or solder connections and also provides mounting holes.

Tweet-a-Watt starter pack
Tweet-a-Watt is a DIY wireless power monitoring system. The project uses an ‘off the shelf’ power monitor called the Kill-a-Watt and adds wireless reporting. Each plug transmits the power usage at that outlet to a central computer receiver. The receiver can then log, graph and report the data. This pack contains nearly everything* necessary to build a single outlet monitor and receiver. To monitor additional outlets, you will need an add-on transmitter pack. One outlet can monitor up to 1500 Watts.

FTDI Friend + extras
Long gone are the days of parallel ports and serial ports. Now the USB port reigns supreme! But USB is hard, and you just want to transfer your every-day serial data from a microcontroller to computer. What now? Enter the FTDI Friend! The Xbee only communicative via TTL serial, so if you want to reprogram the Xbee using a computer you’ll need an FTDI Friend (or FTDI cable).

USB FTDI TTL-232 cable
This is a FTDI FT232RL usb/serial chip embedded in a cable that has a 6-pin socket at the end. Useful whenever you want to communicate with a TTL serial device, such as an XBee through a breakout board.

BONUS: As a nice gift for giftee, print out or store/send our Xbee tutorials. Pop them on a flash drive or print’em out!

REMINDER: For the products we stock we conveniently included our “add to wishlist” button! For today only the products we sell in this gift guide are 10% off (use code XBEE) on checkout.

If we missed any cool products, post’em up!

Today is another book day, we’ll have other guides about many different topics which have books and make great gifts – but today is about preocessing books! We consider these books some the best resources for learning processing! Why processing? We’ve found that it’s the best way for people who want to learn programming to get started, they’re instantly able to run free open source software on Win, Mac and Linux and they code they learn can easily be applied to learning Arduino later!

Getting Started with Processing by Casey Reas & Ben Fry
We get asked the following a lot from beginners “how do you learn how to program” and our answer is usually “try processing”. It’s open source, free to download, it has a massive community and the things you learn will help you with learning Arduino which is usually within the context we’re asked.

Learn computer programming the easy way with Processing, a simple language that lets you use code to create drawings, animation, and interactive graphics. Programming courses usually start with theory, but this book lets you jump right into creative and fun projects. It’s ideal for anyone who wants to learn basic programming, and serves as a simple introduction to graphics for people with some programming skills.

Written by the founders of Processing, this book takes you through the learning process one step at a time to help you grasp core programming concepts. You’ll learn how to sketch with code — creating a program with one a line of code, observing the result, and then adding to it. Join the thousands of hobbyists, students, and professionals who have discovered this free and educational community platform.

Learning Processing: A Beginner’s Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction by Daniel Shiffman

This book teaches you the basic building blocks of programming needed to create cutting-edge graphics applications including interactive art, live video processing, and data visualization. A unique lab-style manual, the book gives graphic and web designers, artists, and illustrators of all stripes a jumpstart on working with the Processing programming environment by providing instruction on the basic principles of the language, followed by careful explanations of select advanced techniques.

Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists by Casey Reas, Ben Fry

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it’s clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

Visualizing Data: Exploring and Explaining Data with the Processing Environment by Ben Fry
Enormous quantities of data go unused or underused today, simply because people can’t visualize the quantities and relationships in it. Using a downloadable programming environment developed by the author, Visualizing Data demonstrates methods for representing data accurately on the Web and elsewhere, complete with user interaction, animation, and more.

How do the 3.1 billion A, C, G and T letters of the human genome compare to those of a chimp or a mouse? What do the paths that millions of visitors take through a web site look like? With Visualizing Data, you learn how to answer complex questions like these with thoroughly interactive displays. We’re not talking about cookie-cutter charts and graphs. This book teaches you how to design entire interfaces around large, complex data sets with the help of a powerful new design and prototyping tool called “Processing”.

Used by many researchers and companies to convey specific data in a clear and understandable manner, the Processing beta is available free. With this tool and Visualizing Data as a guide, you’ll learn basic visualization principles, how to choose the right kind of display for your purposes, and how to provide interactive features that will bring users to your site over and over.

Post up in the comments if there’s a book you like!

Lastly, if you want to support this great free open source project, get a shirt!

It’s that time! HOLIDAY TIME! We’re going to do a gift guide almost every day for the next couple months, if you need to print out our store catalog, you can do that here (PDF).

Today is book day, we’ll have other guides about many different topics which have books and make great gifts – but today is about Arduino books! We consider these books some the best resources for learning Arduino!

Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book.

Inside, you’ll learn about:

• Interaction design and physical computing
• The Arduino hardware and software development environment
• Basics of electricity and electronics
• Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
• Drawing a schematic diagram

And more. With inexpensive hardware and open-source software components that you can download free, getting started with Arduino is a snap. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED.

Join the tens of thousands of hobbyists who have discovered this incredible (and educational) platform. Written by the co-founder of the Arduino project, with illustrations by Elisa Canducci, Getting Started with Arduino gets you in on the fun!

Practical Arduino by Jon Oxer & Hugh Blemings
This book is best used for people who’ve gone through our tutorials and want more! Please note that the book does not come with any electronic parts or hardware. You’ll probably want an Arduino starter pack or similar so that you have the Arduino, USB cable, power adapter, wires, and a protoshield. Create your own Arduino-based designs, gain an in-depth knowledge of the architecture of Arduino, and learn the easy-to-use Arduino language all in the context of practical projects that you can build yourself at home. Get hands-on experience using a variety of projects and recipes for everything from home automation to test equipment. Arduino has taken off as an incredibly popular building block among ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and DIY home automation developers. Practical Arduino provides detailed instructions for building a wide range of both practical and fun Arduino-related projects covering areas such as hobbies, automotive, communications, home automation, and instrumentation.

An Arduino Workshop by Joe Pardue
The really cool thing about Arduino is that you can start playing with Physical Computing, Microcontrollers, and Embedded Systems without understanding much of what you are doing. The Arduino, designed for the novice, has become so popular that there is now an embarrassment of riches when it comes to amount of information and hardware available. So much stuff is out there, in fact, that some folks have trouble puzzling out what they need to just to get started. This text, An Arduino Workshop, and the associated hardware projects kit bring all the pieces of the puzzle together in one place.

Programming Interactivity: A Designer’s Guide to Processing, Arduino, and Openframeworks by Joshua Noble

Make cool stuff. If you’re a designer or artist without a lot of programming experience, this book will teach you to work with 2D and 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, and electronic circuitry to create all sorts of interesting and compelling experiences — online and off. Programming Interactivity explains programming and electrical engineering basics, and introduces three freely available tools created specifically for artists and designers.

30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius by Simon Monk
This wickedly inventive guide shows you how to program and build a variety of projects with the Arduino microcontroller development system. Covering Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius gets you up to speed with the simplified C programming you need to know–no prior programming experience necessary. Using easy-to-find components and equipment, this do-it-yourself book explains how to attach an Arduino board to your computer, program it, and connect electronics to it to create fiendishly fun projects. The only limit is your imagination!

Making things talk by Tom Igoe
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

Did we miss any books? Post up in the comments!

It’s that time! HOLIDAY TIME! We’re going to do a gift guide almost every day for the next couple months, if you need to print out our store catalog, you can do that here (PDF).

Today we’re kicking it off with a gift guide for the Arduino enthusiast who already has an Arduino and wishes to do more!

Shields allow you to turn an Arduino into things like music players, robots, wireless and more. Here is just a small sampling of 10 great shields to be given as gifts for friends, family or yourself! If you’re hungry for more be sure to visit http://shieldlist.org/ for a very comprehensive list!

In our list we also indicated which ones are open source hardware – Lastly, post your favorite shields (and why) in the comments!

Let’s get started!

Sparkfun SM5100B Cellular Shield
The Cellular Shield for Arduino includes all the parts needed to interface your Arduino with an SM5100B cellular module. This allows you to easily add SMS, GSM/GPRS, and TCP/IP functionalities to your Arduino-based project. All you need to add cellular functionality to your Arduino project is a SIM card (pre-paid or straight from your phone) and an antenna and you can start sending Serial.print statements to make calls, send texts and serve web pages!

License: Not indicated

Adafruit Data logging shield for Arduino
Here’s a handy Arduino shield: we’ve had a lot of people looking for a dedicated and well-designed data logging shield. We worked hard to engineer an inexpensive but well-rounded design. Not only is it easy to assemble and customize, it also comes with great documentation and libraries.

You can get going quickly – saving data to files on any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted SD card, to be read by any plotting, spreadsheet or analysis program. We even have a tutorial on how to use two free software programs to plot your data The included Real Time Clock timestamps all your data with the current time, so that you know precisely what happened when!

Please note that this item does not come with an Arduino (you’ll need one to use with the shield), or an SD card. It does come with the RTC battery, however. The kit is un-assembled, You’ll need some basic soldering skills to put it together, but even if you don’t have much experience you can get it done in under 1 hour.

• SD card interface works with FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards. 3.3v level shifter circuitry prevents damage to your SD card
• Real time clock (RTC) keeps the time going even when the Arduino is unplugged. The battery backup lasts for years
• Included libraries and example code for both SD and RTC mean you can get going quickly
• Prototyping area for soldering connectors, circuitry or sensors.
• Onboard 3.3v regulator is both a reliable reference voltage and also reliably runs SD cards that require a lot of power to run

License: Open source hardware

Arduino Ethernet shield with micro SD connector – Assembled
The Arduino Ethernet Shield (assembled) allows an Arduino board to connect to the internet. It is based on the Wiznet W5100 ethernet chip (datasheet). The Wiznet W5100 provides a network (IP) stack capable of both TCP and UDP. It supports up to four simultaneous socket connections. Use the Ethernet library to write sketches which connect to the internet using the shield.

The new Ethernet shield now includes a micro SD card connector, it is MEGA compatible and an on-board reset controller.
The ethernet shield connects to an Arduino board using long wire-wrap headers which extend through the shield. This keeps the pin layout intact and allows another shield to be stacked on top.

Arduino uses digital pins 10, 11, 12, and 13 (SPI) to communicate with the W5100 on the ethernet shield. These pins cannot be used for general i/o.
The shield provides a standard RJ45 ethernet jack. An Arduino is necessary to use this shield but is not included.

License: Open source hardware

Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino kit – v1.0. Here is a design for a full-featured motor shield that will be able to power many simple to medium-complexity projects.

• 2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos connected to the Arduino’s high-resolution dedicated timer – no jitter!
• 4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 36VDC.
• Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
• Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil or interleaved stepping.
• Pull down resistors keep motors disabled during power-up
• Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (10-22AWG) and power
• Arduino reset button brought up top
• 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external power, for seperate logic/motor supplies
• Tested compatible with Arduino Mega, Diecimila & Duemilanove
• Download the easy-to-use Arduino software library, check out the examples and you’re ready to go!

License: Open source hardware

RobotPirate Nixie tube ArduiNIX Shield
The ArduiNIX shield is a user programmable platform for driving multiplexed Nixie tube or other high voltage displays.

License: Open source hardware

Adafruit Proto Shield for Arduino Kit – v.5

Works with the Uno! This prototyping shield is the best out there (well, I think so, at least). It works with UNO, NG, Diecimila and Duemilanove Arduinos.
Check out these awesome specifcations:

• It has a nice standard 0.1″x0.1″ prototying grid with big pads
• A IC pattern for adding DIP ICs up to 20 pins
• Power rails down the middle and sides
• A reset button and an extra general use button
• 2 3mm general use LEDs, red and green, as well as 2 matching resistors
• The ICSP header is up top if you like to upload to your Arduino using a programmer
• A surface-mount chip area for up to 14 SOIC size parts
• Compatible with either tiny breadboards or ‘standard’ breadboards with the rails removed.
• Every pin is brought out, including the new 3V and Reset header pins
• 2 0.1uF capacitors on either side for extra power stability

License: Open source hardware

Touchscreen! 320×240 OLED Screen. Resistive Touch Screen. Storage for 4 full resolution images or 60 128×128 images. Only uses Arduino pins D2 and D3. Draw Shapes, Pixels, Colors, Graphs, Buttons with complete ease, using a SubProcessing graphics API.

Liquidware: Touch Shield slide

License: Not indicated

Wayne and Layne Video Game Shield
The Video Game Shield is an Arduino add-on shield to make your own video games, including graphics, text, sound effects, and music! Using the power of open source, this Shield includes everything you need to make awesome black-and-white video games on your TV. It supports up to two Nintendo Wii Nunchuck controllers for an easy and familiar interface. Do you need to output text, graphics, or audio through RCA jacks to a TV? Do you need to work with two Nunchucks at the same time? You can do both of these things with Wayne and Layne’s Video Game Shield.

License: Open source hardware

Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit – v1.1

Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz,
12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It’s low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer.

This shield is a kit, and comes with all parts you need to build it. Arduino, SD card, tools, speaker and headphones are not included. It is fairly easy to construct and anyone with a successful soldering project under their belt should be able to build it.

The shield comes with an Arduino library for easy use; simply drag uncompressed wave files onto the SD card and plug it in. Then use the library to play audio when buttons are pressed, or when a sensor goes off, or when serial data is received, etc. Audio is played asynchronously as an interrupt, so the Arduino can perform tasks while the audio is playing.

• Can play any uncompressed 22KHz, 16bit, mono Wave (.wav) files of any size. While it isnt CD quality, it is certainly good enough to play music, have spoken word, or audio effects. Check out the demo video/audio at the webpage
• Output is mono, into L and R channels, standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a connection for a speaker that is switched on when the headphones are unplugged
• Files are read off of a FAT16-formatted SD/MMC card 
• Included library and examples makes playing audio easy
• Please note that the library is rather bulky, requiring 10K of flash and more than 1/2 K of RAM for buffering audio. It works fine using an ATmega168-based

License: Open source hardware

WiShield – Async v2.0
Adds WiFi networking support to Arduino. 802.11b Wi-Fi certified. 1Mbps and 2 Mbps throughput speeds. Supports both infrastructure (BSS) and ad hoc (IBSS) wireless networks. WEP, both 64-bit and 128-bit. WPA/WPA2 (TKIP and AES) PSK.

License: Not indicated