We were wary at first when the email came in with the headline “SparkFun is having a free day” and figured surly this is in relation to recent events? But no, after 7 years of loyal customers, SparkFun is simply giving back to the community.
It’s interesting to think that without their services, we wouldn’t have some of the amazing hacks we introduce every day. Such as the DIY mood lamp, or Cell phone alt-variometer, or Arduino iPod remote control. And their free day will allow some disadvantaged hackers the ability to finally flex that muscle sitting between their shoulders. What do you plan to make?
Mark your calendars folks, On January the 7th 2010 SparkFun is giving every household a $100 (until they reach $100k), if that’s not an incentive to wake up early, what is?
As a side note, do you think we’ve had enough posts about SparkFun lately?
[Thanks Diego]
I’d love to be able to get an arduino and some stepper motors through this scheme… call me a cynic, but I reckon its likely that most of the 1000 successful orders will be on ebay minutes after the offer opens.
Opening 9am MST… I’ll be sure to be camping the sparkfun checkout button at 4pm GMT on the 7th January, along with a million others, no doubt :)
Gee whiz I guess you guys are right. I am no longer going to get a sparkfun kit, I have decided instead to sell 3 pallets of altoid tins I have secured from a bombed-out warehouse in Serbia through a third party. Great for all of those sparkfun projects.
My original idea wasn’t much in the Christmas spirit much like January 7 isn’t December 25. Best of luck to all and to all a good night lol.
wow this would be sweet, i would like to start using AVRs in my projects, and i have one waiting on the backburner because of lack of funds (poor college kid stereotype). id love to be able to get a AVR getup, programmer and LCD.
also cheerful phil, youre lame man.
For me it’d be going on sale at: Friday, January 8, 2010 at 5:00:00 AM
The morning of a friends wedding that im groomsmaning at. I might get up and try my luck (cos i’m so cheap)
dext3r you just lost your hackaday discount on said altoid tins and now I’m back in the bidding just to make sure you dont get a sparkfun kit Negative Nancy. I will devote my time to getting free Honey Baked Hams and setting up a massive sparkfun bot army while subsisting only on hams and drippings. It will be tough buy I’m inspired.
nyuk nyuk nyuk
So, honestly, how long will it take to sell out? 15 minutes? 5 minutes? 30 seconds? I dunno, I’m gonna be camped out, but it’s definitely gonna be a huge rush. What I wonder is, how badly are people going to abuse this? For example, I hope people aren’t going to get a couple things they really want and then spend the rest cleaning Sparkfun out of AVRs they don’t need. I know all I really want is an Arduino and a an AVR USB programmer (I’m tired of using a parallel port cable), and it might be nice to grab a couple of nifty buttons/thingamabobs to play with. It’s really generous of Sparkfun to reach out to those of us with shallower pockets.
I’m just weighing in for the international “penniless student” with an awesome future camp, I’m a final year Irish computer and electronic engineer and literally don’t have the money for a resistor! This is the best news I’ve ever heard. Good hunting ladies & gentlemen!
@cheerful phil
PS You suck. Damn trolls…
Here is prediction:
11:59 PM server barely working
12:00 am Spark Fun down
12:01 am Spark Fun down
12:02 am Spark Fun down
12:03 Spark fun up again, offer run out already
Johnholio ya really can’t afford a resistor? Surely there are tons of them around the uni lab dumpsters. I have found old VCRs to be a wonderful repository of resistors, diodes, transistors, etc. Surely someone on craigslist free is getting rid of that or an old TV. There is always the “Pencil lead” trick where you draw lines of different thicknesses on paper and make your own in varying degrees that I would be sure they would teach you in EE school or even you might have heard of it in computer school when people talk about overclocking older AMDs hehe. Also many household vegetables and plants can be used not only as resistors but some have very unique capacitance properties. I’m not saying hook an arduino to a group of ferns and sit back and watch your new pong game, but being a broke student made (and makes me still) poke around and re-beat the life into something until I find something that works better. Ya can try to beat the pikeys to things left on people’s stoops but who are we kidding those guys are fast lol! Anyhoo best of luck in your numerous endeavors.
I think I made up my mind, either the $99.95 Spartan-3E board or parts to make something similar to http://warrantyvoidifremoved.com/formica
whats to stop you from buying a $100 giftcard?
Hoping I can get in on it. The have some arduino and gps stuff I’ve wanted to play with for a while but couldn’t really justify the cost.
@hawkeye
That they say in the original article that you can’t.
e have some arduino and gps stuff I’ve wanted to play with for a while but couldn’t really justify the cost.
Hello!
And that day is nearby. We have until Thursday to decide what we want.
And naturally I believe I’ll select a pair of LCD graphic displays (not character based, one uses an SPI format (or method) and one has its own breakout board. The SPI one has a helper board of its own…
it will all be sold out before we get to load the page…
To quote someone reasonably well known in SCIFI circles, “Not bloody likely.”.
The SparkFun site reads “SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!” I guess they figured if they had made the free day April 1st, the joke would have been too obvious. LOL!
Sparkfun is closed. we killed it.
“SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!”
Quite amusing if you look on google trends, it has been very very good advertising for them. Even if they were to give away $100,000 of stuff I do wonder what the net price is to them since things are very expensive on their site I find…. Oh well it does have some good stuff. Wonder if it will come back before tomorrow…?
Looks like we killed it. Damn, guess i won’t be getting any free stuff.
Free day is fuckin fiasco! Maybe they get lots of people trying to get free money, but nobody can’t even sey their logo!
bad advertising..
… and i’ll get my geekstaff from somewhere else.
I love competitions!
Not surprised their web server croaked. I can’t even ping it now.
R.I.P. SparkFun web server.
A lucky dip would have been a far better idea IMO… Could have said you have 5hours to put in an entry and then the first 1000 drawn get free stuff. They could have even done their guess the time for free stuff to sell out by telling people to email in the number of entries to be expected in total…
I wonder who will end up getting their order through.
1) he who is lucky
2) he who is persistent enough to wait until everyone else gives up
3) he who is as clever as to script the ordering process
Any bets?
It’s not completely dead. I got far enough along to build a cart, and it tells me that $1408 out of the $100000 has been given away so far, at 8:18am PST (18 minutes in).
IMHO, those that didn’t have their cart waiting at the submit order button can better stop trying. It’s dead.
I got as far as a page saying ‘order confirmed’ in the title, but the page itself was empty. We’ll have to see tomorrow if my Christmas stocking has been filled :-)
Site is at $4509 now, 32mins in.
Damn, that was fast… Site is now at $97.541. Maybe next time :-(
Slow I think actually, their website is just up the sh*tter! Doesnt strike me as particularly professional advertising if you ask me!
guy: That’s weird. It says $17k now.
I keep trying to update my cart to get 3 boards instead of just 1, and it keeps not working and I give up and just reload the shopping-cart page, which occasionally works.
And now they’re back to the “SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!” page.
Yay! I just got through, order conformed!
Then the order tracking page, “2010-01-07 – Credit Card (Authorize.net) (debit) +$114.84” :-(((
Now what is up with that? I think their complaint department is gonna be very busy if they pull that trick…
Update:
“Sparkfun free day has concluded! $100,000.00 was given away in: 1h : 44m : 50s”
I got far enough to get to the “register as a new user” page, where I saw that. Sigh.