Scott Hanselman

I'm a fan of Adafruit and all their products. There's no referral links here, just fandom and a personal recommendation from me. I've been a long-time subscriber of the AdaBox. The AdaBox is "Curated Adafruit products, unique collectibles, and exclusive discounts. All delivered quarterly."

You can give Adaboxs (Adaboxen?) as a gift one time, or you can sign up for the regular subscription like I did.

How much do I love them? I actually did a pilgrimage to New York and visited them in person. It's as amazing as you'd imagine and Lady Ada is epic.

Back to the AdaBox! Check out the list of previous Adaboxes (and order one if it's not already sold out!)

As of this writing there are just 2 left of AdaBox007, the SPY box. This one was a hit with my kids as it included a full lockpicking kit! I literally taught them about the internals of a lock and how it works. The AdaBox015 was also cool as it included the CLUE sensor development board that was the same size and shape as the popular BBC micro:bit. The kids made a DIY soil moisture sensor and with the included Water Pump, set up autowatering for our plants!

AdaBoxes are always solderless (unless you want to do something advanced!) and great for kids to explore electronics. You'll get things like IR sensors, Buzzers, LEDs, and full instructions on how to build that box's project!

Every quarter you get a new box and it's a joyful surprise every time. Adabox017 just showed up yesterday at my house! It included a cool MagTag with a 2.9" grayscale E-Ink display! It has an ESP32-S2 wireless module and uses CircuitPython so I, I mean, the children, can easily create a low-power IoT display. The display will even stay on when power is removed. They'll be doing a live unboxing on December 23rd at 8pm ET so subscribe to their YouTube.

We could make a weather display! Internal climate? What's on Netflix? A tiny Dakboard? Show my blood sugar? The possibilities are endless.

AdaBox is available in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.  They are signing up for AdaBox018 that will ship in March 2021.

BTW if you are looking for other holiday shopping ideas, check out Adafruit's Holiday Shipping Guide here. Anyway, enough of my rant. Their stuff is a joy, go check it out.

Sponsor: Have you tried developing in Rider yet? This fast and feature-rich cross-platform IDE improves your code for .NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core, Xamarin, and Unity applications on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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