9 ms·

15 Years of SparkFun

264 points by kartikkumar 8y ago

rhombocombus 8y ago
Bravo Sparkfun! They are the group that I hold most responsible for reigniting my interest in programming, which eventually led me into a happy career in software development. Their projects, products, and educational materials helped me see the real world effects of code, and I am really grateful that I found them and learned from them.
- dylan604 8y ago
  I give them credit for the other side of the coin. After programming for a while, I credit SparkFun for getting me interested and back into hardware. With all of the very affordable micro-controllers and various shields/kits, it's so much fun designing the circuits, building it, and then writing the code to make it function. However, I'm still at the stage of when it's all assembled and code being written and it doesn't work, I have to decide if it's just bad programming, bad hardware/circuit assembly, or just flat out bad circuitry design. Way more debugging than just figuring out what line I forgot to use a semi-colon or where I reassigned a variable's value etc. With all of that experience, I have even more respect for people like Woz. I have online forums to ask questions. The "grey beards" just had to figure it out ;-)
russh 8y ago
It took me years to break my "Dings and Dents" module addiction. Some weeks I'd even send in multiple orders while telling myself this will be the last time. It was too entertaining trying to figure out why each board didn't pass QA and how they could be fixed using parts from pervious orders. I learned a lot.
- andyjohnson0 8y ago
  > It was too entertaining trying to figure out why each board didn't pass QA Do they have a reputation for poor quality? I bought a RedBoard Arduino clone from them last year and it was DOA, as was the replacement (different batches).
  - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    No, the Dings & Dents is specifically stuff that didn't pass their QA, but they sell really cheap. I haven't bought a ton from SF, but everything I have worked right out of the box.
    - andyjohnson0 8y ago
      Ah ok. I'd bought sensors and breakout boards etc from them and never had problems. Good to know.
  - russh 8y ago
    I very rarely have an issue with a sparkfun product. The "Dents and Dings" boards are boards that failed QA that they sell cheap as-is without warranty. After examining a couple hundred "Dents and Dings" boards I'd say they are very strict when it comes to QA.
mkempe 8y ago
Kudos! If you have a chance to visit their building [edit: in Colorado, near Boulder], and even to take a class with them, it's impressive and great fun.
bcohen5055 8y ago
I grew up in Colorado and having them as a local resource for components was truly a gift. My dad was an EE and in his eyes Sparkfun was a great alternative to the Radioshack of his early days. When I was in college in Fort Collins I made a quite a few trips for last minute parts to finish my projects and I had a ton of fun when I got one of the 5.00 dumpster dive boxes. Keep up the good work!
- makerofspoons 8y ago
  When I was in college at CU Boulder I remember frequently taking the bus to their old location to pick up parts. We all felt lucky when assembling our final projects that we had such a great resource so close for local pickup, and many of us owe no small part of our degrees to being able to pick up replacement parts the day before we needed to demo!
yardie 8y ago
Cheers to a great company. I wish I had the space to order more stuff.
dylan604 8y ago
I've used them for tons of projects. I've read people that throw shade their way for their prices for components compared to some of the offshore websites like digikey or alibaba. However, I don't like their websites, and anything they might be "overcharging" for is easily made up with what I receive from the rest of their website. I'm constantly in a state of 2-3 projects that are in various stages of incomplete. If the parts&pieces for these projects didn't come from SparkFun, they probably came from Adafruit. Love both of these sites.
- glup 8y ago
  I've come to the conclusion that better documented, quality controlled parts are worth it as my free time for hardware projects dwindles. In the end the parts for RPi and Arduino projects are generally quite cheap in comparison to my time.
- mhb 8y ago
  Not sure where your shore is, but Digikey is in the US.
  - Taniwha 8y ago
    to be fair Digikey is in more than the US, they ship to me from China - probably a good thing given the current US trade war on itself
    - mhb 8y ago
      I don't really think that's being fair. The association the parent made was between Digikey and Alibaba. Digikey has pretty much exactly the same startup story as Sparkfun. Read all about it (https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/about-digikey https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/about-digikey): It was Dr. Ronald A. Stordahl's interest in ham radio that provided the springboard for what has become Digi-Key today. While in college he assembled and began selling a digital electronic keyer kit for sending radiotelegraph code for ham radio operators. It was called the Digi-Key. After obtaining his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Stordahl returned to his hometown of Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The keyer kit was discontinued and he began selling electronic components in 1972. The Digi-Key "keyer" is long gone, but Digi-Key has become one of the fastest growing electronic component distributors in the world. We continue to operate on the premise of providing our customers – you – with superior service, focusing on the key areas of product selection, product availability, on-time delivery, and responsiveness.
canada_dry 8y ago
An awesome success story. As Ray Kroc is supposed to have said: "The two most important things for success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it."
bacon_waffle 8y ago
Congrats to Nate and Sparkfun! I studied ECE at CU a few years behind Nate, and fondly remember the departmental pride in the local and growing (despite the GFC!) electronics company he started.
Zaskoda 8y ago
I was offered a dev job at SparkFun. I really liked the work they offered but the pay was a little low and I got a much better offer from a well-funded project. That well-funded project went bankrupt and SparkFun continued to grow. Sometimes I think maybe I made the wrong decision. There may have been more money to be earned in the short term, but SparkFun is one of those really snazzy companies and I feel like I may have missed out on a great experience.
- sfoblowsjose 8y ago
  It you like getting paid less than market rate, I'm sure you can work there too. Sparkfun: your pay sucks, no one can live in Boulder on your salaries.
unethical_ban 8y ago
I applied to Sparkfun about 8 or 9 years ago - they had some kind of Github easter egg in their application process or something. It was an IT role. I applied and recall being pretty glib; my application was about "me" and how I would benefit, how good I was, etc. The receiver of the resume was beyond unimpressed, and took the time to write a 2-3 paragraph response to how unappealing my tone and application was. I remember it being a sobering and humbling moment, and truly appreciated the time someone took to set a conceited young applicant straight. Sure would have been nice to move to Boulder, though.
- nixpulvis 8y ago
  I spent high school in boulder. Don't get me wrong, the place is "great" and all. But I'm not even a little sad to be gone. A job at Sparkfun might make me reconsider tho, that company is the bees knees. Also, I really wish your experience was the norm. It's far to common to spend hour working on a solution to a technical assignment for a job application, and hear nothing in response.
  - nerfhammer 8y ago
    They actually have a beehive onsite. (not kidding)
    - nickpsecurity 8y ago
      https://makezine.com/projects/bees-sensors-monitor-hive-health/ https://makezine.com/projects/bees-sensors-monitor-hive-heal...
  - peapicker 8y ago
    But high school sucks everywhere... (looking at my, and my own 2 kid's experiences when they were in)
    - nixpulvis 8y ago
      I actually really liked my high school(s)... I just don't like the cities vibe. Not to over generalize, but the whole place felt really ironic to me. A hippy town from the 70s turned rich kid playground. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty well off myself, it's just not my scene.
michaelmior 8y ago
> How do you get a reflow oven to the second floor of a building with no cargo elevator? You get a bunch of people together and get creative. This was a very unsatisfying answer.
- evan_ 8y ago
  I think it goes with the photo of 10-15 guys standing around a reflow oven at the foot of some narrow stairs.
  - exsfethrowaway 8y ago
    Pretty much. Source: I'm one of the guys in the picture. The stairs are actually wider than the picture makes it look (wide enough to have people on both side of the oven while carrying it). The tricky part was the corner: the oven was long enough that it had to hang out in the air over the corner as we brought it around. I recall that meant lifting it to shoulder height to clear the railing.
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      That's how you get a reflow oven stuck impossibly in the corner, when the door frame you used to rotate it mysteriously disappears.
    - michaelmior 8y ago
      So basically the pivot scene from Friends https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tam7KO4qhUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tam7KO4qhUI
  - michaelmior 8y ago
    I understand it goes with the photo. But the photo doesn't really provide more of an explanation.
- dylan604 8y ago
  Reminds me of the old SGI joke about how any SGI box that took less that 4 people to carry it was considered a desktop.
jrumbut 8y ago
I used a sparkfun kit to create a sales demo for some sensors and I learned so much more about circuitry than I did in a couple years of theory based coursework. The author's early point is right, getting hands on is the best way to learn EE and I have no idea why even good schools don't have you build stuff early and often.
schappim 8y ago
I sold my business (Geek Ammo) to Nate/SparkFun and spent a few months working with the team. Flying back and forth between Sydney, Australia and Boulder/Niwot every few weeks. SparkFun is a great company with a really distinct culture that sits at the intersection of hacking and education. Congratulations to Nate and the team for going 15 years strong!
iancmceachern 8y ago
I've been using their stuff since right after they started, any my career was just starting. I've used their products to prototype new products and ideas for many projects. Blood pumps, artificial hearts, LVADS, medical devices and indoor agriculture products. Their mix of education, support, accessability, real technical chops and providing the latest stuff is only matched closely by Adafruit. I'm thankful for both. They are an invaluable resource for both engineers and hobbyists.
blhack 8y ago
Part of my life involves building $100k+ interactive/experiential advertising installations. Sparkfun has been pretty vital for a lot of our builds. The ability to know what we're getting, and to have it shipped overnight is a Big Deal. For a while it was looking like Amazon might replace them on shipping, but shipping has become hit and miss enough that it isn't worth the risk anymore.
- exikyut 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, what do "interactive/experiential advertising installations" consist of? Vague and generic is fine. All I've got is eg bus stop ads with webcams, but that's probably not $100k (...or maybe it is).
  - blhack 8y ago
    We built, for instance, a 10' tall animatronic set piece to promote a major comic book property at comic con. Attendees stood at a control console and moved essentially a giant robot around. Any time you see a brand doing some sort of non standard advertising installation; stuff attendees would walk up to and interact with, that's the type of stuff I'm talking about.
  - rollcat 8y ago
    Not OP, but I've been working (among others) on this one: https://www.unit9.com/project/5gum https://www.unit9.com/project/5gum My friend and co-worker built this one almost all by himself (HW&SW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfANs2y_frk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfANs2y_frk
anemic 8y ago
Company that produces instruction manuals like the Heaterizer XL3000 can't be bad! https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Tools/SFE-Heaterizer-Instructions-01.pdf https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Tools/SFE-Heaterizer-Ins...
Keyframe 8y ago
Few things are as exciting for a programmer as dabbling with electronics is. Especially if you have no experience with it. I knew some maths and physics and I knew basics of electronics, but never dabbled with a soldering iron, let alone other stuff. AND THEN, I had a need for a simple motor-driven CNC-like machine that would drive my film camera around the set, like a small-ish, motion repeatable, crane. Motion Control system, basically, but DIY-I-have-no-idea-if-electricity-will-kill-me stuff. My dudes, let me tell you, the whole process was extremely laborious and extremely fun. Reminiscent of ye olde days of poking around Commodore 64 memory addresses to see what will happen. With microcontroler abundance today and a whole gallery of crap for them, like sensors and drivers and whatnots, you owe yourself to try it out. Just a friendly reminder, it's a bug that once you catch will fill your house with random electronics junk, oscilloscopes, PSUs and other stuff. Like photography, buying equipment never stops.
- H1Supreme 8y ago
  Yeah, it's tons of fun. Like lots of people, I got started with Arduino's, but eventually ventured off into other areas. In my case, reading datasheets of various ic's was the biggest hurdle. But, after a while, you realize most of them are laid out in a similar way.

264 points by kartikkumar 8y ago

Bravo Sparkfun! They are the group that I hold most responsible for reigniting my interest in programming, which eventually led me into a happy career in software development. Their projects, products, and educational materials helped me see the real world effects of code, and I am really grateful that I found them and learned from them.

dylan604 8y ago
I give them credit for the other side of the coin. After programming for a while, I credit SparkFun for getting me interested and back into hardware. With all of the very affordable micro-controllers and various shields/kits, it's so much fun designing the circuits, building it, and then writing the code to make it function. However, I'm still at the stage of when it's all assembled and code being written and it doesn't work, I have to decide if it's just bad programming, bad hardware/circuit assembly, or just flat out bad circuitry design. Way more debugging than just figuring out what line I forgot to use a semi-colon or where I reassigned a variable's value etc. With all of that experience, I have even more respect for people like Woz. I have online forums to ask questions. The "grey beards" just had to figure it out ;-)

russh 8y ago

It took me years to break my "Dings and Dents" module addiction. Some weeks I'd even send in multiple orders while telling myself this will be the last time. It was too entertaining trying to figure out why each board didn't pass QA and how they could be fixed using parts from pervious orders. I learned a lot.

andyjohnson0 8y ago
> It was too entertaining trying to figure out why each board didn't pass QA Do they have a reputation for poor quality? I bought a RedBoard Arduino clone from them last year and it was DOA, as was the replacement (different batches).
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  No, the Dings & Dents is specifically stuff that didn't pass their QA, but they sell really cheap. I haven't bought a ton from SF, but everything I have worked right out of the box.
  - andyjohnson0 8y ago
    Ah ok. I'd bought sensors and breakout boards etc from them and never had problems. Good to know.
- russh 8y ago
  I very rarely have an issue with a sparkfun product. The "Dents and Dings" boards are boards that failed QA that they sell cheap as-is without warranty. After examining a couple hundred "Dents and Dings" boards I'd say they are very strict when it comes to QA.

mkempe 8y ago

Kudos! If you have a chance to visit their building [edit: in Colorado, near Boulder], and even to take a class with them, it's impressive and great fun.

bcohen5055 8y ago

I grew up in Colorado and having them as a local resource for components was truly a gift. My dad was an EE and in his eyes Sparkfun was a great alternative to the Radioshack of his early days. When I was in college in Fort Collins I made a quite a few trips for last minute parts to finish my projects and I had a ton of fun when I got one of the 5.00 dumpster dive boxes. Keep up the good work!

makerofspoons 8y ago
When I was in college at CU Boulder I remember frequently taking the bus to their old location to pick up parts. We all felt lucky when assembling our final projects that we had such a great resource so close for local pickup, and many of us owe no small part of our degrees to being able to pick up replacement parts the day before we needed to demo!

yardie 8y ago

Cheers to a great company. I wish I had the space to order more stuff.

dylan604 8y ago

I've used them for tons of projects. I've read people that throw shade their way for their prices for components compared to some of the offshore websites like digikey or alibaba. However, I don't like their websites, and anything they might be "overcharging" for is easily made up with what I receive from the rest of their website. I'm constantly in a state of 2-3 projects that are in various stages of incomplete. If the parts&pieces for these projects didn't come from SparkFun, they probably came from Adafruit. Love both of these sites.

glup 8y ago
I've come to the conclusion that better documented, quality controlled parts are worth it as my free time for hardware projects dwindles. In the end the parts for RPi and Arduino projects are generally quite cheap in comparison to my time.
mhb 8y ago
Not sure where your shore is, but Digikey is in the US.
- Taniwha 8y ago
  to be fair Digikey is in more than the US, they ship to me from China - probably a good thing given the current US trade war on itself
  - mhb 8y ago
    I don't really think that's being fair. The association the parent made was between Digikey and Alibaba. Digikey has pretty much exactly the same startup story as Sparkfun. Read all about it (https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/about-digikey https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/about-digikey): It was Dr. Ronald A. Stordahl's interest in ham radio that provided the springboard for what has become Digi-Key today. While in college he assembled and began selling a digital electronic keyer kit for sending radiotelegraph code for ham radio operators. It was called the Digi-Key. After obtaining his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Stordahl returned to his hometown of Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The keyer kit was discontinued and he began selling electronic components in 1972. The Digi-Key "keyer" is long gone, but Digi-Key has become one of the fastest growing electronic component distributors in the world. We continue to operate on the premise of providing our customers – you – with superior service, focusing on the key areas of product selection, product availability, on-time delivery, and responsiveness.

canada_dry 8y ago

An awesome success story. As Ray Kroc is supposed to have said: "The two most important things for success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it."

bacon_waffle 8y ago

Congrats to Nate and Sparkfun! I studied ECE at CU a few years behind Nate, and fondly remember the departmental pride in the local and growing (despite the GFC!) electronics company he started.

Zaskoda 8y ago

I was offered a dev job at SparkFun. I really liked the work they offered but the pay was a little low and I got a much better offer from a well-funded project. That well-funded project went bankrupt and SparkFun continued to grow. Sometimes I think maybe I made the wrong decision. There may have been more money to be earned in the short term, but SparkFun is one of those really snazzy companies and I feel like I may have missed out on a great experience.

sfoblowsjose 8y ago
It you like getting paid less than market rate, I'm sure you can work there too. Sparkfun: your pay sucks, no one can live in Boulder on your salaries.

unethical_ban 8y ago

I applied to Sparkfun about 8 or 9 years ago - they had some kind of Github easter egg in their application process or something. It was an IT role. I applied and recall being pretty glib; my application was about "me" and how I would benefit, how good I was, etc. The receiver of the resume was beyond unimpressed, and took the time to write a 2-3 paragraph response to how unappealing my tone and application was. I remember it being a sobering and humbling moment, and truly appreciated the time someone took to set a conceited young applicant straight. Sure would have been nice to move to Boulder, though.

nixpulvis 8y ago
I spent high school in boulder. Don't get me wrong, the place is "great" and all. But I'm not even a little sad to be gone. A job at Sparkfun might make me reconsider tho, that company is the bees knees. Also, I really wish your experience was the norm. It's far to common to spend hour working on a solution to a technical assignment for a job application, and hear nothing in response.
- nerfhammer 8y ago
  They actually have a beehive onsite. (not kidding)
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    https://makezine.com/projects/bees-sensors-monitor-hive-health/ https://makezine.com/projects/bees-sensors-monitor-hive-heal...
- peapicker 8y ago
  But high school sucks everywhere... (looking at my, and my own 2 kid's experiences when they were in)
  - nixpulvis 8y ago
    I actually really liked my high school(s)... I just don't like the cities vibe. Not to over generalize, but the whole place felt really ironic to me. A hippy town from the 70s turned rich kid playground. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty well off myself, it's just not my scene.

michaelmior 8y ago

> How do you get a reflow oven to the second floor of a building with no cargo elevator? You get a bunch of people together and get creative. This was a very unsatisfying answer.

evan_ 8y ago
I think it goes with the photo of 10-15 guys standing around a reflow oven at the foot of some narrow stairs.
- exsfethrowaway 8y ago
  Pretty much. Source: I'm one of the guys in the picture. The stairs are actually wider than the picture makes it look (wide enough to have people on both side of the oven while carrying it). The tricky part was the corner: the oven was long enough that it had to hang out in the air over the corner as we brought it around. I recall that meant lifting it to shoulder height to clear the railing.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    That's how you get a reflow oven stuck impossibly in the corner, when the door frame you used to rotate it mysteriously disappears.
  - michaelmior 8y ago
    So basically the pivot scene from Friends https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tam7KO4qhUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tam7KO4qhUI
- michaelmior 8y ago
  I understand it goes with the photo. But the photo doesn't really provide more of an explanation.
dylan604 8y ago
Reminds me of the old SGI joke about how any SGI box that took less that 4 people to carry it was considered a desktop.

jrumbut 8y ago

I used a sparkfun kit to create a sales demo for some sensors and I learned so much more about circuitry than I did in a couple years of theory based coursework. The author's early point is right, getting hands on is the best way to learn EE and I have no idea why even good schools don't have you build stuff early and often.

schappim 8y ago

I sold my business (Geek Ammo) to Nate/SparkFun and spent a few months working with the team. Flying back and forth between Sydney, Australia and Boulder/Niwot every few weeks. SparkFun is a great company with a really distinct culture that sits at the intersection of hacking and education. Congratulations to Nate and the team for going 15 years strong!

iancmceachern 8y ago

I've been using their stuff since right after they started, any my career was just starting. I've used their products to prototype new products and ideas for many projects. Blood pumps, artificial hearts, LVADS, medical devices and indoor agriculture products. Their mix of education, support, accessability, real technical chops and providing the latest stuff is only matched closely by Adafruit. I'm thankful for both. They are an invaluable resource for both engineers and hobbyists.

blhack 8y ago

Part of my life involves building $100k+ interactive/experiential advertising installations. Sparkfun has been pretty vital for a lot of our builds. The ability to know what we're getting, and to have it shipped overnight is a Big Deal. For a while it was looking like Amazon might replace them on shipping, but shipping has become hit and miss enough that it isn't worth the risk anymore.

exikyut 8y ago
Out of curiosity, what do "interactive/experiential advertising installations" consist of? Vague and generic is fine. All I've got is eg bus stop ads with webcams, but that's probably not $100k (...or maybe it is).
- blhack 8y ago
  We built, for instance, a 10' tall animatronic set piece to promote a major comic book property at comic con. Attendees stood at a control console and moved essentially a giant robot around. Any time you see a brand doing some sort of non standard advertising installation; stuff attendees would walk up to and interact with, that's the type of stuff I'm talking about.
- rollcat 8y ago
  Not OP, but I've been working (among others) on this one: https://www.unit9.com/project/5gum https://www.unit9.com/project/5gum My friend and co-worker built this one almost all by himself (HW&SW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfANs2y_frk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfANs2y_frk

anemic 8y ago

Company that produces instruction manuals like the Heaterizer XL3000 can't be bad! https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Tools/SFE-Heaterizer-Instructions-01.pdf https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Tools/SFE-Heaterizer-Ins...

Keyframe 8y ago

Few things are as exciting for a programmer as dabbling with electronics is. Especially if you have no experience with it. I knew some maths and physics and I knew basics of electronics, but never dabbled with a soldering iron, let alone other stuff. AND THEN, I had a need for a simple motor-driven CNC-like machine that would drive my film camera around the set, like a small-ish, motion repeatable, crane. Motion Control system, basically, but DIY-I-have-no-idea-if-electricity-will-kill-me stuff. My dudes, let me tell you, the whole process was extremely laborious and extremely fun. Reminiscent of ye olde days of poking around Commodore 64 memory addresses to see what will happen. With microcontroler abundance today and a whole gallery of crap for them, like sensors and drivers and whatnots, you owe yourself to try it out. Just a friendly reminder, it's a bug that once you catch will fill your house with random electronics junk, oscilloscopes, PSUs and other stuff. Like photography, buying equipment never stops.

H1Supreme 8y ago
Yeah, it's tons of fun. Like lots of people, I got started with Arduino's, but eventually ventured off into other areas. In my case, reading datasheets of various ic's was the biggest hurdle. But, after a while, you realize most of them are laid out in a similar way.