Arduino Gift Guide!

The Arduino open-source microcontroller platform can be programmed and equipped to perform a nearly endless list of functions. It’s likely the best all-around centerpiece to a modern electronics project. But one of the tasks Arduino is best used for is straight-up fun – the open design means there’s an Arduino board suitable for almost any project, and a wealth of add-on “shields” extends its abilities with ease.

Updated! – This list keeps growing, and growing and …

Starter kits

Arduino Starter Kit – The best way to get going with the very capable microcontroller platform, the starter kit sets you up with a bunch of basic parts necessary for tinkering plus a wealth of knowledge in the included 400+ pages of Making Things Talk, by Arduino developer Tom Igoe. Features –

• 1x Arduino Diecimila
• 1x Mini Breadboard
• 1x 3 ft. USB Cable
• 10x 1K Resistors
• 2x 10k Resistors
• 3x Red LEDs
• 2x Green LEDs
• 1X Superbright Blue LED
• 1x Momentary Tactile Switch
• 2x Interlink Force Sensing Resistors
• 1x Protoshield Kit (unassembled)
• Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe
• 24″ each of Red, Blue & Black AWG jumper wire
• 9V Battery Case w/DC Plug (some assembly required)
• Yes, even a 9V battery

Price $89.99

Arduino Starter Pack – A different take on the Arduino survival kit, this pack from Adafruit includes potentiometers, a DC wall adapter, and a nice selection of LEDs –

• Arduino Duemilanove – including 4 rubber feet
• 3′ USB cable
• Protoshield Kit
• Tiny Breadboard
• 9V DC regulated wall adapter
• 9V Battery case with switch and a 2.1mm plug
• 10K potentiometer, 1K potentiometer
• 2 small pushbuttons
• 5 red diffused bright LEDs, plus one each of red, green and blue ultra-bright LED
• 5 100 ohm resistors, 5 1K resistors, 5 10K resistors
• CdS photocell sensor
• 4 pieces of 18″ long jumper wire in red, black, yellow and blue

Price $65

Arduino main boards

Arduino Duemilanove – The new standard Arduino main board. This latest model auto-switches its power source between USB and DC jack – whichever is available. “Duemilanove” means 2009 in Italian and is named after the year of its release. Specs include –

• Microcontroller – ATmega168
• Operating Voltage – 5V
• Input Voltage – (recommended) 7-12V
• Input Voltage – (limits) 6-20V
• Digital I/O Pins – 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
• Analog Input Pins – 6
• DC Current per I/O Pin – 40 mA
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin – 50 mA
• Flash Memory – 16 KB (of which 2 KB used by bootloader)
• SRAM – 1 KB
• EEPROM – 512 bytes
• Clock Speed – 16 MHz

Price $34.99

Arduino Mini Board & Arduino Mini USB Adapter – The Arduino Mini offers the same power and flexibility of the standard boards, but in a much smaller package. This makes it an ideal choice for projects where space is at a premium. The USB adapter (pictured above) is used to program the Mini from your computer and can be removed from a project was your done wrting and uploading software
Price $36.99 (Mini board), $19.99(USB adapter)

Arduino Pro – It’s blue and skinny! The Arduino Pro is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega168 (datasheet). It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, an 8 MHz resonator, a battery power jack, a power switch, a reset button, and holes for mounting a power jack, an ICSP header, and pin headers. The Arduino Pro is intended for semi-permanent installation in objects or exhibitions. The board comes without pre-mounted headers, allowing the use of various types of connectors or direct soldering of wires. The pin layout is compatible with Arduino shields. The board can be powered with a battery, and runs at 3.3V.
Features:

• ATmega168V running at 8MHz external resonator
• Low-voltage board needs no interfacing circuitry to popular 3.3V devices and modules (GPS, Accelerometers, sensors, etc)
• USB connection off board
• 3.3V regulator
• Reverse polarity protected
• DC input 3.3V up to 12V
• Resettable fuse prevents damage to board in case of short
• Power select switch acts as on/off switch

Price: $19.95

Seeeduino – Another variation on the standard board but featuring some notable changes, including –

• Duplicate digital IO to 100mil grid for prototype board compatibility.
• Shrink componets height below female headers.
• Change Type-B USB port to Mini USB.
• Replace 3.5mm DC power Jack to battery 2 Pin plug.
• Reset and power indicator near RST button.
• Auto-reset selection.
• 3.3V Operating Voltage selection.
• Pin out UART for FTDI232 bit-bang operation.
• Pin out 2 extra ADC.
• Optional capacitor for improving 3.3V output performance.
• Pin out for I2C and sensors

Price $23.99

Arduino Nano – So tiny you’ll want to eat it! Arduino Nano is a surface mount breadboard embedded version with integrated USB. It is a smallest, complete, and breadboard friendly. It has everything that Diecimila has (electrically) with more analog input pins and onboard +5V AREF jumper. Physically, it is missing power jack and power select jumper. Since the Nano is automatically sense and switch to the higher potential source of power, there is no need for the power select jumper. Nano’s got the breadboard-ability of the Boarduino and the Mini+USB with smaller footprint than either, so users have more breadboard space.
Features:

• Automatic reset during program download
• Power OK blue LED on the bottom
• Green (TX), red (RX) and orange (L) LED
• +5V to AREF jumper
• Auto sensing/switching power input
• Small mini-B USB for programming and serial monitor
• ICSP header for direct program download
• Power OK blue LED on the bottom
• Standard 0.1″ spacing DIP (breadboard friendly)
• Manual reset switch

Price: $49.99

LilyPad Pro Kit – The LilyPad Arduino is a microcontroller board designed for wearables and e-textiles. It can be sewn to fabric and similarly mounted power supplies, sensors and actuators with conductive thread. The LilyPad Pro Kit gives you the full flexibility and power of the LilyPad system. Program the LilyPad main board to respond to physical changes in light, sound, or motion. Create displays of light, sound, and get physical feedback using the various LilyPad periphery boards. The kit includes –

• LilyPad Mainboard
• LilyPad Power Supply
• LilyPad USB Link
• Mini USB Cable

Price $49.95

Arduino Bare Bones kit – For those who’d prefer to build their own Arduino from the ground up, the Bare Bones kit let’s you solder your way to microcontroller bliss. A good choice for permanent projects, the Bare Bones can be programmed with a USB-TTL Serial Cable
Price $19.99 (kit), $20.00 (programming cable)

Freeduino – Another solderable Arduino kit, the Freeduino is compatible with standard expansion shields, has onboard USB port (like the standard Arduino), and is fully compatible with add-on shields. It also looks pretty darn cool in orange/yellow!
Price $23.99

DC Boarduino kit – An Arduino designed especially for use with an electronics breadboard, this Boarduino sports a standard DC jack for power and can be programmed with a USB-TTL Serial cable. Features include –

• Designed to plug into a breadboard for easy prototyping
• Petite size, only 3″ x 0.8″ (75mm x 20mm)
• All ‘standard’ pins are brought out – Digital 0 thru 13, Analog 0 thru 5, ARef, 5V, Ground, Vin and Reset
• Chip comes preprogrammed with a “no-wait” Arduino bootloader
• 2 LEDs, green power and red “pin 13” just like the Arduino Diecimila
• Available as a low cost kit with standard parts, so its never out of stock
• All through-hole parts are easy to solder
• Reset button
• ATmega168, running at 16.00 MHz, just like the lastest Arduino, the Diecimila
• 6-pin standard ICSP header
• Standard 2.1mm DC jack (just like the original) with 5V regulator to run on 7V-17V power
• 1N4001 diode protects against using incorrect wall adapter
• 6-pin header at the end for a USB-TTL cable
• Auto-reset capability when used with a USB-TTL cable

Price $17.50 (kit), $20.00(programming cable)

iDuino – Another ‘duino kit designed for use with electronics breadboards, the iDuino can be powered via USB and uses standard 5mm LEDs as status indicators.
Price $17.82

Sanguino – Monster Arduino! The Sanguino is an Arduino-compatible board that boasts 4x the memory, 4x the ram, and 12 extra pins. Its a sweet board that gives us some room to expand while still being completely through-hole for simple assembly.
Features:

• atmega644P core
• 32 total general purpose I/O pins (some are multipurpose)
• 8 analog pins
• 6 PWM pins
• 64K flash memory
• 4K RAM
• 2K EEPROM
• completely through-hole construction
• breadboard compatible
• 100% open source
• compatible with Arduino 0012 with minimal hacking

Price $25.00

Shields – Additional hardware that attaches directly to Arduino

Pocket Piano kit – This is a board for making the Arduino into a portable stand alone music synthesizer. It plugs directly into the Arduino board and provides 25 multiplexed keys (2 full octaves), 4 pots, status LED, reset switch, digital to analog converter IC, and a RCA audio jack. The Arduino board with its powerful AVR processor is more than adequate for a wide range of sound synthesis techniques. We have experimented with simple additive / wave-table synthesis, frequency modulation, ring modulation, sampling, polyphony, various arpeggiators. The whole thing can be powered over the Arduino’s USB port for convenient experimenting. Arduino not included. The board is designed to mount easily to 1/8″ panel material, and 1/2″ round keys can be made out of wood or plastic. Features include –

• 25 keys and multiplexer circuitry
• 4 potentiometers, 1 controls output level
• Microchip MCP4921 12 bit SPI DAC
• Passive low pass output filter

Price $44.95

Waveshield Kit – 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. A great low cost 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.

This shield is a kit, and comes with all parts you need to build it. Arduino, SD card, tools, speaker and headphones are not included. It is fairly easy to construct and anyone with a successful soldering project under their belt should be able to build it.
Price $21.95

Danger Shield kit – The Danger Shield is an add-on for the Arduino micro controller board. It contains a variety of fun and useful electronic circuits that you can use to do fun and useful things. It is a fully self-contained shield. You plug it into your Arduino, and you can immediately start using it. No extra things to hook up, no external components. Just a really rad board ready to rock. Soldering required. Features include –

• 3x Linear sliders w/ integrated LEDs (independently hooked up to PWM)
• 3x Pushbuttons
• 2x Indicator LEDs (each with a PWM)
• 1x Piezo buzzer (for making noise!)
• 1x Temperature sensor
• 1x Light sensor
• 1x Knock sensor
• 1x 7 segment LED (with shift register)
• Power LED and reset button

Price $44.95

MotorShield for Arduino Kit – Put projects in motion with this kit’s specialized connectivity for motors. The shield can accomodate –

• 2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos with high-resolution dedicated timer – no jitter!
• 4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 36VDC.
• Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
• Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil or interleaved stepping.

Features include –

• Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (10-22AWG) and power
• Arduino reset button brought up top (Diecimila only)
• 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external power, for seperate logic/motor supplies
• Tested compatible with Diecimila (NG is next!)
• Download the easy-to-use Arduino software library, check out the examples and you’re ready to go!

Price $19.50

ProtoShield kit – A great way to make your own custom shield for Arduino, the ProtoShield can accommodate a mini-breadboard or can be soldered to directly via its versatile perforated pattern. Features include –

Reset button up top
• ICSP header
• Lots of GND and +5V rails
• DIP prototyping area makes it easy to add more chips
• SOIC prototyping area above USB jack for up to 14-pin SOIC chip, narrow medium or wide package.
• Use ‘mini’ or ‘medium’ breadboard
• Two 3mm LEDs with matching resistors
• Extra 6mm button

Price $15.00

Arduino AVR Scope Clock Shield – Turn your X-Y capable analog oscilloscope it a very unique clock with this kit. A very cool (and practical) way to put your idle scope to work!
Price $34.95

XPortShield – Add Ethernet! Want your Arduino to check email? How about sending a twitter (which can then be easily forwarded to a phone via SMS)? Or grabbing data from a website? There are so many possibilities for projects that connect to the Internet to get data, now there’s an easy way to do it with an Arduino. This shield kit allows you to add and use an XPort or XPort direct(+) Ethernet module (not included) using any 4 pins. All of the TCP/IP stack awfulness is done for you in the module so its super easy to just connect to any server. The kit does not include an Ethernet module!
Price $15.00(shield kit), $28.00 (X-Port module)

GPS Shield and data logger kit
GPS shield for Arduino kit with data-logging capability. After building this easy kit, you can create your own geo-locative project.

Features:

• This shield is designed to make GPS projects straight-forward and easy. Plug in a supported GPS module and run any of the example Arduino sketches for parsing GPS data (NMEA sentences), logging to a FAT16-formatted SD flash memory card and storing analog sensor data along with precise location, date and time in CSV format.
• The shield is designed specifically for use with the EM-406a module: the small surface-mount GPS connector is pre-soldered for you. (It is a high-quality engine with quick time-to-fix and excellent reception, even in downtown New York City!) It can also be used with a Tyco A1035D, EB-85A or Lassen IQ module. GPS module, Arduino, and SD memory card are not included.
• The examples work fine on ATmega168-based Arduino (or compatible). Run-time is approximately 3 hours with a 9V battery and up to 12 hours using a MintyBoost, assuming no power-saving features are enabled.

Price: $19.50

Sanguino Breakout Shield – This is a kit of the Sanguino Breakout Shield board. It is primarily intended as a shield for existing Sanguino boards, but we’ve also included the footprint for a full Sanguino on the PCB as well. Its up to you as the builder to decide what shape the board should take: You can build it as a single board with an integrated Sanguino, or you can add headers that allow you to plug an existing Sanguino into the board. its your choice!
Price $15.00

Doublewide ExtenderShield kit – The shield-lover’s shield! Liquidware’s extension add-on provides more room for attaching multiple shields – also available in a double-tall format. Features –

• 4.2in tall x 2.7in wide
• 108mm tall x 69mm wide
• Arduino replicated mounting holes
• Arduino replicated plated through-holes
• Solderable dev area

Price $18.33

TouchShield kit – This high-end kit enhances Arduino’s capabilities with a touch-sensitive OLED screen and built-in memory for graphics storage and more.Features include –

• 128×128 OLED Screen
• 262K Colors
• Touch Screen
• Powered from the Arduino’s 5 VDC pins
• Only Uses Arduino Pins: 2 and 3
• Holds 60 Full Screen Images
• Compatible with Arduino Environment
• Arduino Graphics Core Ready to Go
• Draw Shapes, Pixels, Colors, Graphs, Buttons and More directly from the Arduino IDE

Price $139.63

Arduino Ethernet Shield – The official ethernet offering from the Arduino development team, utilizing a WizNet w5100 chip.
Price $45.00

Arduino extras – Hardware add-ons & other items designed for use with Arduino

Getting Started with Arduino – The perfect companion to your first Arduino, 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 gives you lots of ideas for projects and helps you get going on them right away. Written by Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project. Covering topics such as –

• Interaction design and physical computing
• The Arduino hardware and software development environment
• Basics of electricity and electronics
• Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
• Drawing a schematic diagram

Price $12.99

BlinkM-Smart LED -Have you wanted an LED that can fade from deep red to bright purple? Flash like a police light? Turn on with the subtle fade of an incandescent bulb? Flicker like a candle? That’s BlinkM.

We’ve attached an ultra bright wide-angle RGB LED to a microcontroller. Using BlinkM Sequencer, our software that fuses a color picker with a drum machine, you program BlinkM to be any color, and blink and fade in virtually any pattern.

When you’ve programmed your BlinkM, you unplug it and pop it into your project. Apply 5 volts, and it does its thing, whether that’s glowing your favorite pinkish purple, or pulse like an old neon light.
Price $12.95

Open Heart kit – The Open Heart is an LED matrix of individually addressable LEDs. It can be used to create a brooch or bag light with highly customizable animations. It can be configured so that you can temporarily attach it to fabrics with headers that you simply push through, or you can configure it to be sewn into a project using conductive fabric for a more permanent setup. You’ll need an Arduino to complete this project as well as a soldering iron and basic hand tools. Features –

• Heart PCB
• 27 Red LEDs
• 6 Resistors
• Right angle headers
• Crimp housings with metal crimps
• 6 wire cable

Xbee adapter kit – Add wireless to your projects! This adapter board is designed to make adding wireless point-to-point or mesh networking easy. Adafruit looked at all the XBee adapter boards available and decided to design something better.
Features:

• Onboard 3.3V regulator to cleanly power your XBee, up to 250mA
• Level shifting circuitry means that its trivial to connect it to 5V circuitry such as an Arduino without risk of damage
• Two LEDs, one for activity (RSSI), the other for power (Associate)
• 10-pin 2mm sockets included to protect the modem and allow easy swapping, upgrading or recycling
• All the commonly used pins are brought out along the edge, making it easy to breadboard or wire up
• Specifically created for use with an FTDI cable to connect to a computer via USB. This means that you can use or upgrade the adapter with a computer simply by plugging in a cable
• For use with any XBee/Pro pin-compatible module

Price $10.00

Holiday Shipping Deadlines:

FedEx*:
Ground – Dec 15th
3-Day Saver -Dec 17th
2-Day -Dec 18th
Overnight -Dec 19th

*Customers experiences on orders with these ship methods placed after these dates may vary, the dates listed are what we call “safe dates”

USPS (Any Method):
Due to the high volume of mail that the postal service deals with around the holidays, order by Dec. 10th, however, many packages are lost or delayed in transit and we do not replace or refund any orders lost using this ship method, we strongly encourage you to not use this method in December.

Want more? Stop by the Maker Shed store and check out THE place for open source hardware, Arduino & Arduino accessories, electronic kits, science kits, smart stuff for kids, back issues of MAKE & CRAFT, box sets, books, robots, kits from Japan and more.

Stay tuned – we’ll be adding more to this list. If you’ve got a fave Arduino product that comes to mind, feel free to drop a line in the comments!