Adafruit Holiday Gift Guide 2013: Electronic Parts for #3DPrinting Projects

We have shared guides for 3D printers and for software and resources to help you design for 3D printing, and now we will share a gift guide that speaks to the core of what Adafruit has to offer for the 3D designer: Electronic Parts for 3D Printed Projects!

The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. But after you exhaust your appetite for printing plastic paperweights, you are ready to roll up your sleeves and integrate a broad range of materials and techniques into your 3D printing practice. Hackers, Makers, and artists all over the world are finding inspiration in the parts like those we share here, and building 3D printed projects around them controlled by Arduino, BeagleBoard Black, Raspberry Pi, FLORA, GEMMA, bare microcontroller, and other boards and platforms!

Check out the Adafruit blog every Thursday for #3dthursday. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!


Electronics Parts Available @ Adafruit

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NeoPixel Ring – 16 x WS2812 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers: Round and round and round they go! 16 ultra bright smart LED NeoPixels are arranged in a circle with 1.75″ (44.5mm) outer diameter. The rings are ‘chainable’ – connect the output pin of one to the input pin of another. Use only one microcontroller pin to control as many as you can chain together! Each LED is addressable as the driver chip is inside the LED. Each one has ~18mA constant current drive so the color will be very consistent even if the voltage varies, and no external choke resistors are required making the design slim. Power the whole thing with 5VDC (4-7V works) and you’re ready to rock. (read more)


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NeoPixel Stick – 8 x WS2812 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers: Make your own little LED strip arrangement with this stick of NeoPixel LEDs. We crammed 8 of the tiny 5050 (5mm x 5mm) smart RGB LEDs onto a PCB with mounting holes and a chainable design. Use only one microcontroller pin to control as many as you can chain together! Each LED is addressable as the driver chip is inside the LED. Each one has ~18mA constant current drive so the color will be very consistent even if the voltage varies, and no external choke resistors are required making the design slim. Power the whole thing with 5VDC (4-7V works) and you’re ready to rock. (read more)


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Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Weatherproof Strip 60 LED -1m – WHITE: You thought it couldn’t get better than our world-famous 32-LED-per-meter Digital LED strip but we will prove you wrong! You wanted twice the LEDs? We got it (well, its 1.875 times as many but that’s within a margin of error). You wanted thinner strips? Now only 12.5 mm wide, 10 mm if you remove the strip from the casing. You wanted less noticable strip color – this strip has white-colored flex PCB, which will be less visible against white-painted walls. This is the strip with white flex PCB, its identical to the black 60 LED/meter except it has a different color mask on the flex strip. (read more)


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Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 Kit – v2.0: The original Adafruit Motorshield kit is one of our most beloved kits, which is why we decided to make something even better. We have upgraded the shield kit to make the bestest, easiest way to drive DC and Stepper motors. This shield will make quick work of your next robotics project! Also, our Motor Party Pack for Arduino pack has been upgraded to include this v2 shield. (read more)


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Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Shield – I2C interface: You want to make a cool Arduino 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 the Arduino has only a few PWM outputs, and maybe those outputs are conflicting with another shield! What now? You could give up OR you could just get our handy PWM and Servo driver shield. It’s just like our popular PWM/Servo Breakout but now Arduino-ready and works with any Arduino that uses shields: Uno, Leo, Mega, ADK, its all good. (read more)


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Analog Feedback Servo: It looks like a servo, it acts like a servo, but it’s more than just a servo! We got a factory to custom-make these classic ‘standard’ sized hobby servos with a twist – the feedback (potentiometer wiper) line is brought out to a fourth white wire. You can read this wire with an analog input such as those on an Arduino, to get the servo’s position. That information can be used in robotics to improve stability or even allow ‘recording’ of servo motion. (read more)


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Peristaltic Liquid Pump with Silicone Tubing: Move fluid safely from here to there with this very nice little pump. Unlike most liquid pumps, this is a peristaltic type – the pump squishes the silicone tubing that contains the liquid instead of impelling it directly. The upshot? The pump never touches the fluid which makes this an excellent choice for any food/drink/sterile based pumping such as for making drink-bots or gardening robots! (read more)


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Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout – 66 channel w/10 Hz updates – Version 3: New! Version 3 comes with the latest module which has external antenna support and Pulse-Per-Second output. 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:

  • -165 dBm sensitivity, 10 Hz updates, 66 channels
  • 5V friendly design and only 20mA current draw
  • Breadboard friendly + two mounting holes
  • RTC battery-compatible
  • Built-in datalogging
  • PPS output on fix
  • >25Km altitude
  • Internal patch antenna + u.FL connector for external active antenna
  • Fix status LED

…all for under $40! (read more)


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Triple-axis Accelerometer+Magnetometer (Compass) Board – LSM303: He told you “Go West, young maker!” – but you don’t know which way is West! Ah, if only you had this triple-axis accelerometer/magnetometer compass module. Inside are two sensors, one is a classic 3-axis accelerometer, which can tell you which direction is down towards the Earth (by measuring gravity). The other is a magnetometer that can sense where the strongest magnetic force is coming from, generally used to detect magnetic north. By combining this data you can then orient your project! (read more)


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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)


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Arcade Button – 30mm Translucent Blue: A button is a button, and a switch is a switch, but these translucent arcade buttons are in a class of their own. They’re the same size as common arcade controls (often referred to as 30mm diameter) but have some nice things going for them that justify the extra dollar. First, they look fantastic, all 6 colors have a crystal translucent glossy look. Although they do not have LEDs built in, we’re confident that sticking a diffused LED into the body would make it light up very nicely. They are also shorter than cheap arcade controls, and snap into place, so you only need 1.5″ of depth (1.25″ if you bend the contacts over). The button action is smooth, without a strong click, yet you can definitely feel when the button is pressed. A tiny micro-switch is pre-installed, with gold plated contacts. (read more)


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16mm Illuminated Pushbutton – Red Momentary: A button is a button, and an LED is a LED, but this LED illuminated button is a lovely combination of both! It’s a medium sized button, large enough to press easily but not too big that it gets in the way of your project panel. It has a built in LED that can be controlled separately from the switch action – either to indicate or just to look good. (read more)


3D Printing Projects from the Adafruit Learning System


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3D Printed LED Goggles by Rick Winscot: Make it easy for your friends to find you in a crowd with some blinky awesome scratch-built headgear. PLA plastic from your 3D printer is a fine match for NeoPixel Rings. (read more)


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3D Printed Watch Body for the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit by Matt Griffin: Love the TIMESQUARE DIY Watch kit and have a great idea for a custom watch body you would like to fabricate to house the electronic parts? The watch kit already ships with style to spare, but that’s no reason to limit yourself to the included watch band when you can make one. Here are the steps taken to create the “Circling the Square” TIMESQUARE Watch Body, with plenty of tips and tricks for how you can design your own! (read more)


3D Printed Wireless MIDI Controller Guitar by Noé and Pedro Ruiz: Rock out with your very own wireless Keytar, a bluetooth MIDI controller that works with any computer or tablet! Jam out with up to 12 buttons that can be customized to trigger sounds or effects. This project uses the E-Z Key bluefruit wireless controller from Adafruit. The guitar features 4 arcade buttons and 6 LED push buttons. The guitar can be used as a MIDI instrument, video game controller and even DJ controller. You can customize and configure your guitar to be whatever you want. The enclosure is 3D printed and you can download the design files from Thingiverse. (read more)


Silicone Robo-Tentacle by Matthew Borgatti: Build your own soft pneumatic robot using 3d printing and silicone casting! This squishy tentacle robot has no hard moving parts. It’s entirely powered by air pressure. If you’ve got a 3d printer chances are you can make your own working tentacle in a matter of days. (read more)


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3D Printed Animatronic Robot Head by Rick Winscot: Have you ever wanted to build a robot, but don’t know where to start? Or… are you looking for a project that you can cut-your-teeth on? This servo-controlled animatronic robot head uses two servos for movement, two speakers for eyes and an LED mouth for a friendly remote-controlled robot. This an advanced project, for people who already know how to control servos and LEDs. This tutorial will focus on the 3D printing and assembly of the ‘bot head! (read more)


SHIPPING DEADLINES

Here are your 2013 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 13, 2013 – There is no guarantee that UPS Ground packages will arrive in time for Christmas.

UPS 3-day (USA orders): Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 19, 2013 – Arrive on 12/24/2013.

UPS 2-day (USA orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 20, 2013 – Arrive on 12/24/2013.

UPS overnight (USA orders): Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 23, 2013 – Arrive on 12/24/2013.

UPS International: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 16, 2013. Can take up extra time due to worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2013 or sooner.

Please note: We do not offer Saturday service for UPS.
Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013, Christmas, no UPS pickup or delivery service.
Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014, 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 13, 2013 – Arrive by 12/24/2013 or sooner.

USPS First class mail international (International orders): Place orders by Friday – November 22, 2013. Can take up to 30 days ore more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2013 or sooner, but not a trackable service cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/24/13.

USPS Express mail international(International orders): Place orders by Friday – December 13, 2013. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/24/2013 or sooner.

Gift Certificates are always available at any time.

When in doubt contact us!


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