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Adafruit deemed an essential service to make Personal Protection Equipment

blog.adafruit.com

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Re: Adafruit deemed an essential service to make Personal Protection Equipment

#21

> Adafruit is a 100% woman-owned, loan-free, VC-free, profitable, USA Manufacturing company. Cool

Open hardware, gold standard tutorials, open source libraries. But holy cow, they need to charge a premium to make it work. I'm always conflicted between supporting them or just going to ebay or alibaba.

They target hobbyists (like me) so if they mark things up, it’s worth it IMO. The value add-on they provide is that they have s curated selection of items, everything you buy from them has associated tutorials which help you incorporate them into your projects.

Re: Adafruit deemed an essential service to make Personal Protection Equipment

#22

> Adafruit is a 100% woman-owned, loan-free, VC-free, profitable, USA Manufacturing company. Cool

Open hardware, gold standard tutorials, open source libraries. But holy cow, they need to charge a premium to make it work. I'm always conflicted between supporting them or just going to ebay or alibaba.

I often have to make that tradeoff, too.

The protocol I've settled on is to always buy the first one or two parts of a new type from Adafruit. This may also has the advantage of higher quality than no-name eBay sellers. That way, I know how a part is supposed to work, before trying cheaper sources. Then later, if I want a bunch of them for stock, or just messing around with (and maybe using up or breaking), I would buy from eBay.

Also, if I'm placing an order from them (and already having to pay for shipping), I'm willing to pay a slight premium for any other things I might want to include at the same time.

(This is the same tradeoff I make between buying from the more-expensive local hardware store that has fantastic people working there who have been in the trades and know everything versus Home Depot. Five 8 foot long 2x4's? Home Depot. Some specialized part that I want to get right one? The local store, even though it might be cheaper at the big-box place.)

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