We hope all of your bellies are being thoroughly stuffed with Thanksgiving goodness and that you’re ready to get serious about your holiday shopping! Today’s guide features products and kits for a range of Arduino users: from beginner to veteran and everywhere in between.
Available at Adafruit!
Arduino Starter Kit from Arduino.cc: The Arduino starter kit provides an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It contains all of the essential components required to start programming with the Arduino Uno board, and a guidebook featuring 15 different projects, which are designed to evolve the user from beginner to professional level. The starter kit has been developed together with a series of ten video tutorials hosted by Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi. Read more about the kit on Arduino.cc (read more)
Getting Started with Arduino By Massimo Banzi – 3rd Edition: 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, updated for the latest Arduino release, 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. Written by Massimo Banzi, the co-founder of Arduino, and Michael Shiloh, Arduino’s educational lead. (read more)
DIY Gamer Kit from Technology Will Save Us: Build your very own Arduino-based portable gaming toy with this kit from Tech Will Save Us!
The DIY Gamer Kit is an Arduino controlled gaming device. Once you solder the whole thing together, you’ll have an 8×8 LED matrix display that serves as the device’s screen. From there, just easily upload your game’s code onto an Arduino (not included) and play! It’s a great learning experience with a fun result.
The screen is just a small matrix, so you can’t really play Assassin’s Creed, but there are a lot of fun old school options you can set up like Snake or Tetris. You can follow some of their tutorials for even more. We set ours up to play a low rez Flappy Bird and had a great time. (read more)
Adafruit ARDX – v1.3 Experimentation Kit for Arduino (Uno R3) – v1.3: 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. Basically everything you need to be playing within minutes of its arrival. No soldering required! (read more)
FLORA Budget Pack:Get started with the fabulous Adafruit Flora platform with this lovely budget kit, just enough to get you started with this fun wearable computer. Included are enough parts to make your first wearable electronic project. There’s a Flora motherboard, four ultra-bright chainable RGB pixels, a 3xAAA battery holder and batteries, a battery extension cable, our high quality stainless steel thread, alligator clips to help you test out your parts and connections and a USB cable for reprogramming the Flora. Over $50 worth of goodies, for under $40 (read more)
Parallax BOEBot Robot for Arduino Kit: This kit brings the excellent design and tutorials of Parallax to the Arduino world. Make your Arduino the onboard brain of a mobile robot and learn robotics, electronics, and programming with this versatile kit and its accompanying step-by-step lessons. The Board of Education Shield plugs into your own Arduino (not included) and mounts on the popular Boe-Bot robot chassis. (read more)
Sylvia’s Super Awesome Project Book – Super Simple Arduino!: Written and illustrated by young maker superstar Sylvia. Sylvia’s a kid who loves making, tinkering, and art projects. She’s also the star of Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show – an online series about STEM concepts with millions of views. In this book, Sylvia sets her sights on the inimitable Arduino microcontroller with fun projects, clever and easy-to-follow instructions, and whimsical graphics. It’s a great book for young makers and an incredible way to introduce makers of all ages to the wonderful world of Arduino. Projects include an adjustable strobe and two digital musical instruments with a focus on electronics, coding, science, and engineering. (read more)
Adafruit “Music Maker” MP3 Shield for Arduino w/3W Stereo Amp – v1.0: Bend all audio files to your will with the Adafruit Music Maker shield for Arduino! This powerful shield features the VS1053, an encoding/decoding (codec) chip that can decode a wide variety of audio formats such as MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, MIDI, FLAC, WAV (PCM and ADPCM). It can also be used to record audio in both PCM (WAV) and compressed Ogg Vorbis. You can do all sorts of stuff with the audio as well such as adjusting bass, treble, and volume digitally.
All this functionality is implemented in a light-weight SPI interface so that any Arduino can play audio from an SD card. There’s also a special MIDI mode that you can boot the chip into that will read ‘classic’ 31250Kbaud MIDI data from an Arduino pin and act like a synth/drum machine – there are dozens of built-in drum and sample effects! But the chip is a pain to solder, and needs a lot of extras. That’s why we spun up the best shield, perfect for use with any Arduino Uno, Leonardo or Mega. (read more)
2.8″ TFT Touch Shield for Arduino with Resistive Touch Screen:Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (2.8″ diagonal) bright (4 white-LED backlight) and colorful (18-bit 262,000 different shades)! 240×320 pixels with individual pixel control. It has way more resolution than a black and white 128×64 display. As a bonus, this display has a resistive touchscreen attached to it already, so you can detect finger presses anywhere on the screen. (We also have a capacitive-touch version of this shield here)
The shield is fully assembled, tested and ready to go. No wiring, no soldering! Simply plug it in and load up our library – you’ll have it running in under 10 minutes! Works best with any classic Arduino (UNO/Duemilanove/Diecimila). Solder three jumpers and you can use it at full speed on a Leonardo or Mega as well. (read more)
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. (read more)
We’re excited for the Holiday Season here at Adafruit, and we can’t wait to share that excitement with you! Stay tuned into the blog where you will find new, handpicked gift guides five days a week from November 7 through December 23rd, 2016 alongside holiday themed tutorials and builds!
Free Deals
Adafruit offers exciting deals and free items when you shop with us. As of February 23rd, 2016 3:00 PM ET we are currently offering FREE UPS ground (Continental USA) for orders $200 or more.
Adafruit Holiday Shipping Deadlines 2016
Here are your 2016 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.
The Adafruit Shipping Department works hard to get your orders out as quickly as we can, but once they’re in the hands of our carriers they’re out of our control.
Carriers have been struggling to keep up with the sharp rise in online orders. UPS, FedEX, and USPS all experienced delivery delays over the last few years.
So all the Adafruit Shippers say: Please be sure you get your gifts early! Order as soon as you can! Once you place your order we’ll ship like the wind!
Please note: We do not offer Saturday or Sunday service for UPS or USPS.
Sunday, Dec. 25, 2016, Christmas, no UPS or USPS pickup or delivery service.
Monday, Dec. 26, 2016, no UPS or USPS pickup or delivery service.
Monday, Jan. 2, 2017, no UPS or USPS pickup or delivery service.
Sunday, Jan. 1, 2016, New Year’s Day, no UPS or USPS pickup or delivery service
Gift Certificates are always available at any time.
When in doubt contact us!
Domestic Orders
UPS ground: Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 9, 2016 – There is no guarantee that UPS Ground packages will arrive by December 23.
UPS 3-day: Place orders by Thursday 11am ET – December 15, 2016 – Arrive by 12/23/2016.
UPS 2-day: Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 16, 2016 – Arrive by 12/23/2016.
UPS overnight: Place orders by Monday 11am ET – December 19, 2016 – Arrive by 12/23/2016.
United States Postal Service, First Class and Priority: Place orders by Friday– December 9, 2016 – Arrive by 12/23/2016 or sooner.
International Orders
USPS First class mail international: Place orders by Friday – November 18, 2016. Can take up to 30 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/23/2016 or sooner, but not a trackable service and cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/23/2016.
USPS Express mail international: Place orders by Friday – December 2, 2016. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/23/2016 or sooner.
UPS WORLDWIDE EXPRESS, UPS WORLDWIDE EXPEDITED and UPS EXPRESS SAVER (UPS International orders): Place orders by Friday 11am ET – December 9, 2016 – There is no guarantee that international packages will arrive by December 23 2016.