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Call it a hobbyist endeavor if you will. Making has turned out to be a past time that has captivated many over the last couple of years. While technology has become increasingly accessible to the average consumer through the rapid proliferation of Chinese companies selling through our favorite e-commerce sites, buying through more established online retailers gives you the peace of mind when using that jumper wire without first doing a connectivity test. Thankfully, the holiday season is just around the corner and our favorite haunts are jumping on the festivities to offer you discounts to stretch your dollar so that you can finally finish up that project which has already suffered from exponential scope creep. In this article, we look at the discounts (or possible discounts) we’re looking forward to this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

1. Pololu

Who they are

Pololu is our favorite place to get high performance electronics. Particularly, we have been using the extremely capable Pololu G2 High-Power Motor Driver 18v17 for demanding applications such as running our Soccer Playing robots. Pololu runs great sales, even for items fresh off the factory lines. It was not too long ago that we managed to grab a bunch of VL53L1X Time-of-Flight Distance Sensor Carrier with Voltage Regulator, 400cm Max for a fraction of the recommended retail price- a discount offered even when they were one of the first companies offering this amazing sensor broken out.

What they’re offering

It is perhaps unsurprising that Pololu is coming up with another interesting sale this Black Friday, this time allowing customers the freedom in choosing their price!

First, head to our three wishes form. If you are not already logged in, the page will prompt you to log in or create an account. Then enter up to three products with your desired quantities and prices. Submit your wishes before Tuesday, Nov 26th. We will review your request and get back to you within a few days.

Pololu Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale 2019

Too good too be true? It remains to be seen what sort of discounts Pololu will be willing to offer on their products so we’ll have to try our luck. At the time of writing, we have submitted requests for some items, with requested prices within the prices they are offering for large quantity purchases. It’s a one time gamble so we’re not going to risk missing out on this promotion by asking for absurdly low prices. That being said, if you do manage to get items off your wish list at good discounts, we’d love to hear about it in the comments! In any case, this is a great opportunity to get something you’ve always wanted, but has never been on sale. Any discount on those will certainly beat having to scroll through an enticing list of items you end up buying, but have no use for (don’t worry, we’ve all been there).

If this is too radical for you, they are also offering more traditional discount sales, which may be boring, but will still save you a couple dollars anyway.

2. DFRobot

Who they are

DFRobot is a Chinese company which has earned a reputation for itself with a lineup of original products that are second to none. Their recent iteration of the Lattepanda, the Lattepanda Alpha, is a supercharged Single Board Computer (SBC) that redefines the category the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi had popularized, putting it on par with the MacBook. Unlike many other Kickstarter projects, this certainly isn’t a hype! I’ve built a little enclosure for it (more on that at another time) and have been using the board as my daily driver, doing everything from web browsing to light photo editing and the board has certainly held up as promised.

What they’re offering

While Pololu has inexplicably hidden their Black Friday offerings in a Blog Post, with no mention of it on their Main Page, it would be hard to miss DFRobot’s offerings, which show up as a persistent banner throughout the site. Perhaps out of the heed to the old adage, that one should not reinvent the wheel, DFRobot has decided to simply use every traditional sale format, featuring 4 different “Events”.

• BLACK FRIDAY Flash Deal (Part 1, Part 2)
• Discount Coupon (Coupon Codes shown in image above)
• Top Popular Sellings 2 for 1 – Buy One and Get One Free
• Worldwide Free Shipping Over $150

Unfortunately, the ease of understanding of DFRobot’s sale format is hampered by the weird way in which the pages link up, so using this page will probably be your best bet.

From Day 1’s listings, we’ve already found some great deals on items we’ve used, and items we’d like to try out.

RPLIDAR A1M8 – 360 Degree Laser Scanner Development Kit

Back when Autonomous Cars didn’t make the headlines daily, we were intrigued by this piece of hardware which was one of the first LiDARs built for hobbyists.

One of the projects we used our LIDAR for was a small Self-Driving Car which utilized the sensor to give it spatial awareness of the world around it.

While we are pretty sure we bought the LIDAR when it was a couple hundred bucks, it can be yours now for just USD85 this Black Friday!

Aluminum Alloy Passive Cooling Case for LattePanda Alpha & Delta

One thing I’ll most definitely be picking up for myself would be this massive Cooling Case for my LattePanda Alpha to squeeze out even more performance from this already impressive board.

At just USD29.90, it is certainly worth the dough.

3. Adafruit/Sparkfun

Ok, we cheated. At the time of writing, neither Adafruit nor Sparkfun have come up with their Black Friday/Cyber Monday offerings. If it is any consolation, we’ve lumped them under the same number. While we won’t know for sure if they are conducting any sales this year, Sparkfun has hinted at the possibility in this post, and Adafruit’s already celebrating Christmas with a new Adabox.

That said, we can hazard a guess as to what they’ll be offering if the past years were anything to go by.

During the sale almost all of our catalog will be 20% off! We also have a few even bigger deals

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and a Holiday Gift Guide! (Sparkfun, 2017)

Black Friday is FEATHER FRIDAY here at Adafruit this year! In addition to our 15% off site-wide sale we are offering 20% off products from our Feather line of development boards and accessories for ONE DAY ONLY.

This Black Friday it’s FEATHER FRIDAY at Adafruit! Use the code BLACKFRUIT to get 20% off Feathers and 15% off items storewide! (Adafruit, 2018)

20%! Thats pretty much in line with what DFRobot has come up with, and from the looks of it, we’re expecting it to be a similar figure this year. If you’re looking to buy products that are carried by multiple manufacturers, waiting a little while for these 2 big players to play their cards may work out for you. But if you’re afraid of stocks running low, you’d want to grab the deals at Pololu and DFRobot before they’re gone!

[UPDATES]

BONUS. Get Hacking

Yeah, we cheated again, deal with it, because we had to mention our friends from Singapore!

micro:bit Tinker Kit

Our friends at Tinkercademy have launched several products over the years which are used by schools all over Singapore.

As part of their Christmas Special offering, they are dropping their Tinker Kit for just SGD63 (USD46).

Do check out Get Hacking, their Web Store, where you’ll find a quick guide on the best Tech Toy Gifts you can buy for your kids, relatives and friends (or for yourselves, we won’t judge) this Christmas.

What about CORE?

Unfortunately, while we have a bunch of stock comprising of Electronics and Kits we have developed, we are busy with other matters at the moment and don’t have the time to launch our store.

That said, we are offering our Generic Robot Test Mat as a free download (which will continue to be free forever) because the Spirit of Giving shouldn’t only come up during the festive season.

In the meantime, we are looking for 2 more students to join our competition team for Robocup Rescue Line Singapore Open 2020 so do contact us if you’re interested!

Here’s wishing everyone a great time shopping this Black Friday and Cyber Monday as we collectively embrace the capitalist, consumerist world we live in 🙂