Opensource.com posted their annual open source gift guide and Adafruit has a few of the items in our store as well! Check out the full list here.
The annual Opensource.com gift guide serves up open source gadgets and gifts that kids, adults, hobbiests, and beginners are sure to love and appreciate. Get someone started tinkering with SparkFun’s WeevilEye beginner soldering kit. Show your niece how cool programming can be with Adafruit’s wearable bracelet. And, don’t we all have at least one homebrewer in our lives? For them, check out the BrewPi temperature controller. And that’s just to name a few! See the full list of our 14 best gifts for the holidays this year in the article.
TAZ 4 3D printer from LulzBotPrint out some awesome stuff with the Lulzbot TAZ 4 3D printer! This 3D printer was named the “Most Maker Machine” in Make: Magazine’s “Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing 2015” and has the Free Software Foundation’s Respects Your Freedom certification and is fully compliant with the Open Source Hardware Association’s definition of open hardware. Legit! That also empowers you to download and print upgrades and replacement parts for the 3D printer. You can even print two different colors, or two different materials, at once.
For the super nerd out there, build your own TAZ with the KITTAZ 3D printer kit!
This is a next-level-up Raspberry Pi project for makers familiar with the command line, Linux, or the Raspberry Pi board. The Onion Pi open hardware kit from Adafruit builds a small, low-power, and portable Raspberry Pi with Wi-Fi for increased privacy using Tor (a free software and open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis).
Buy through Adafruit and they donate a portion of the sales to the EFF and Tor! Each order comes with these 8 parts.
BeagleBone Black is a low-cost, credit-card-sized development board from BeagleBoard.org, great for people who are looking for a little more power or more GPIO pins than a Raspberry Pi. This open hardware and software development platform allows everyone from electronic artists to engineers to access a ready-to-use, 1-GHz computer. The BeagleBone Black includes all the necessary components in the box to connect a display, keyboard, and network. And BeagleBoard.org boasts an active development community for ideas, support, and help. Revision C, now available, boosts onboard storage from 2 to 4 gigabytes.
Get the kid in your life involved with prototyping, learning, and fun with this electronics starter kit from littleBits. Choose from three different exploration kits that use an open source library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets. Users have created things like an electric toothbrush to a synth spin table. See all of the many, amazing projects you can make with littleBits.
What can you do with a Raspberry Pi? Just about anything. Your imagination is your only limit! Raspberry Pi comes in a couple of “flavors” with the B packing slightly more oomph and features. The B recently got an upgrade to become the “B+” with more memory and a few new connections, and now it’s the A’s turn, with the release of the A+. So why get the A+ instead of a B+? In short, it’s crazy-cheap and you can build a Linux-powered computer project for twenty bucks. It also consumes less power than its slightly more powerful big sister and comes in an astoundingly tiny footprint.
Head over to opensource.com to read the full list!
