Adafruit Industries - Wikipedia Page 1

Adafruit Industries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adafruit Industries is an open-source hardware company based in New York City. It was founded
by Limor Fried in 2005, in her Massachusetts Institute of Technology dorm room. The company Adafruit Industries
designs and manufactures a number of electronics products, sells a wide variety of electronics
components, tools, and accessories via its online storefront, and produces a number of learning
resources, including written tutorials, introductory videos for beginners, and the longest running live
video electronics show on the internet. All Adafruit products are manufactured in their 40,000 square
feet (3,700 m2 ) factory in SoHo, Manhattan.[1] In 2013, the company took in US$22 million in
revenue, and had shipped over a million products in 480,000 orders,[2] and in January 2016, the
company accepted its one millionth order.[3] Industry open-source hardware
Founded 2005
The name Adafruit comes from Fried's online moniker "ladyada", itself an homage to computer
science pioneer Ada Lovelace. The company's goal is to get more people involved in technology, Founder Limor Fried
[4] Headquarters New York City (SoHo, Manhattan)
science and engineering. Project kits are designed to deliver practical systems—not simply
academic exercises—and to encourage more women into the field. , New York, United States
Revenue US$33 million (2014)
Website adafruit.com (http://adafruit.com)
Contents
1 History
2 Products
2.1 NeoPixel
2.2 Feather development boards
2.2.1 Feather boards comparison
3 Adafruit learning system
4 Presence on YouTube
4.1 Ask an Engineer
4.2 Show-and-Tell
4.3 Wearable Electronics with Becky
Stern
4.4 3D Hangouts with Noe and Pedro
Ruiz
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

History
Limor Fried, then a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began selling electronic kits on her website for her own designs in 2005.[5][6] She
later moved to New York City to found Adafruit Industries.[1] In 2010, Adafruit offered a US$1,000 (equivalent to $1,087 in 2015) reward for whoever
could hack Microsoft's Kinect to make its motion sensing capabilities available for use for other projects. This reward was increased to $2000 and then
$3000 following Microsoft's concerns about tampering.[7][8][9] In 2013, the company had $22 million in revenue; for 2014 increased to $33 million.[1]

Products
In addition to distributing third party components and boards such as the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi, Adafruit develops and sells its own
development boards for educational and hobbyist purposes. In 2016, the company released the Circuit Playground, a board with an Atmel ATmega32u4
microcontroller and a variety of sensors.[10] It, like many Adafruit productions, is circular in shape for ease of use in wearable electronic projects,[11]
along with the FLORA, the companies official wearable electronics development platform.[12] Becky Stern hosted a weekly web show dedicated to
wearable electronics for Adafruit on their YouTube channel.[13]

NeoPixel
NeoPixel is Adafruit's brand of individually-addressable red-green-blue (RGB) LED. They are based on the
WS2812 LED and WS2811 driver, where the WS2811 is integrated into the LED, for reduced footprint.
Adafruit manufactures several products with NeoPixels with form factors such as strips, rings, matrices,

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Arduino shields, traditional five-millimeter cylinder LED and individual NeoPixel with or without a PCB.
The control protocol for NeoPixels is based on only one communication wire. Adafruit provides an Arduino
library to help with the programming of NeoPixels.[14] In addition to the traditional RGB technology,
Adafruit manufactures a red-green-blue-white (RGBW) variant of NeoPixel for all products except those
that feature a NeoPixel Mini 3535. Those integrate an additional white LED in the package for extra
possible color mixes and selectable white color temperature (the company sells single NeoPixels with a
6000K, 4500K and 3000K color temperature).
Mini NeoPixels with comparison to a
Canadian quarter Feather development boards
The Feather development boards constitute Adafruit's
new platform of "Arduino-like" boards. The first one, the Feather 32u4 Basic Proto, was released
on November 4, 2015. The boards all share similarities in that they have the same form factor, same
pinout, similar microcontrollers, feature lithium polymer battery charging and are usually released
every Wednesday since the first one on Adafruit's live electronics show "Ask an Engineer". Each
board has a special feature in addition to the microcontroller breakout, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or
cellular network connectivity or built-in prototyping space or SD card communication. The name
"Feather" comes from the fact that the boards are small, thin, light and easily work with a battery,
allowing you to untether your project from the wall or from a computer. In addition to the boards
themselves, Adafruit engineers and manufactures "Feather Wings", which are expansion cards
allowing the addition of features such as an LCD, a NeoPixel array or DC motor drivers. A headerless Adafruit Feather M0 Basic Proto
Development Board

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Feather boards comparison

Special Flash Clock Release

Board name RAM EEPROM Mass Dimensions GPIO Product page
feature memory rate date
32u4 Basic Proto (https://
Adafruit Feather Built-in November
4.8 g www.adafruit.com/
32u4 Basic Proto protoboard 4, 2015
products/2771)
32u4 Adalogger (https://
Adafruit Feather Built-in SD November
5.1 g 20 (8 PWM, www.adafruit.com/
32u4 Adalogger card support 32 KB 2 KB 1 KB 8 MHz 12, 2015
10 ADC) products/2795)
32u4 Bluefruit LE
Built-in
Adafruit Feather November (https://
Bluetooth 5.7 g
32u4 Bluefruit LE 18, 2015 www.adafruit.com/
support
products/2829)
32 KB
51 mm × HUZZAH with ESP8266
Adafruit Feather SRAM,
Built-in Wi- 23 mm × November WiFi (https://
HUZZAH with 4 MB 80 KB 80 MHz 9.7 g 9 (1 ADC)
Fi support DRAM
8 mm 25, 2015 www.adafruit.com/
ESP8266 WiFi
[15] products/2821)

M0 Basic Proto (https://

Adafruit Feather Built-in December
4.6 g 20 (20 www.adafruit.com/
M0 Basic Proto protoboard 2, 2015
PWM, 6 products/2772)
ADC, 1 M0 Adalogger (https://
Adafruit Feather Built-in SD DAC) December
5.3 g www.adafruit.com/
M0 Adalogger card support 9, 2015
products/2796)
256 KB 32 KB None 48 MHz
Built-in M0 Bluefruit LE (https://
Adafruit Feather January
Bluetooth 5.7 g www.adafruit.com/
M0 Bluefruit LE 20 (8 PWM, 14, 2016
support products/2995M0)
10 ADC, 1
53.65 mm × DAC) M0 WiFi (https://
Adafruit Feather Built-in Wi- January
6.1 g 23 mm × www.adafruit.com/
M0 WiFi Fi support 27, 2016
8 mm products/3010)
Built-in
61 mm × 32u4 FONA (https://
Adafruit Feather cellular 20 (8 PWM, February
32 KB 2 KB 1 KB 8 MHz 8.2 g 23 mm × www.adafruit.com/
32u4 FONA network 10 ADC) 3, 2016
7 mm products/3027)
support
M0 WiFi with uFL
Adafruit Feather 53.65 mm × 20 (8 PWM,
Built-in Wi- March 16, (https://
M0 WiFi with 256 KB 32 KB None 48 MHz 6.1 g 23 mm × 10 ADC, 1
Fi support 2016 www.adafruit.com/
uFL 8 mm DAC)
product/3061)

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Adafruit Feather Built-in 1024 KB 128 KB 120 MHz 5.7 g 51mm x 12 (standard; March 23, STM32F205 with
STM32F205 with WICED (SRAM) 23mm x 8mm 7 PWM, 8 2016 Broadcom WICED
Broadcom support ADC (up to) (https://
WICED , 2 DAC) www.adafruit.com/
products/3056)
Adafruit Feather 32u4 RFM69HCW
32u4 Packet Radio
RFM69HCW (868/915 MHz) (https://
Packet Radio www.adafruit.com/
(868/915 MHz) April 6, product/3076)
Adafruit Feather 2016 32u4 RFM69HCW
32u4 Built-in RF Packet Radio (433 MHz)
20 (8 PWM,
RFM69HCW Radio 32 KB 2 KB 1 KB 8 MHz 5.5g (https://
10 ADC)
Packet Radio Support www.adafruit.com/
(433 MHz) product/3077)
32u4 32u4 RFM95W
Adafruit Feather April 13, LoRa Radio (900 MHz)
32u4 32u4
(https://
RFM95W LoRa 2016
www.adafruit.com/
Radio (900 MHz)
product/3078)

Adafruit learning system

In addition to manufacturing and selling electronic devices, Adafruit regularly publishes tutorials featuring their products. The tutorials show how to
build projects, highlighting their products' abilities and strengths. The site hosts close to 950 guides[16] and articles written by a few collaborators, not
all of them full-time Adafruit employees. The guides range from teardowns of existing wearable electronic devices to 3D printing projects to overview
and introduction of Adafruit merchandise and more.

Presence on YouTube
Adafruit Industries has a substantial presence on the online video streaming website YouTube.[17] The channel has been active since April 2, 2006.[18]
The company was awarded a YouTube Silver Play Button in August 2015 for having surpassed 100,000 subscribers.[19] Adafruit creates different types
of videos, all treating about electronics, and most of them featuring one of their products. Each week for at least six years, several live shows are
streamed.

Ask an Engineer
This weekly show was started in 2010 in Fried's living room. The concept was that viewers could ask her any questions about engineering while she was
assembling electronics kit and Phillip Torrone, her spouse, was preparing shipments. The show is broadcast on YouTube and Ustream and behind-the-
scenes content is streamed to Periscope. The company prides themselves by stating that this is the longest-running electronics live show. Some of the
sections of the stream are new products where Fried demonstrates the week's new product that appeared in the shop, Time Travel, where the hosts look
back on the world of makers, hackers, artists, and engineers and often highlight a special person or event, 3D Printing, where they showcase a special
project or product related to the industry, a Q&A session and a trivia question, where the first viewer with the correct answer wins a product. There also
sometimes is a section dedicated to Raspberry Pi and Arduino news and a section where the hosts read a positive email that they have received from a
satisfied customer. Every week, a coupon code for a 10% rebate on everything in the store except gift certificates and software is issued and is valid
only for the night. The show airs every Wednesday at 8 PM ET on the company's YouTube channel and is still run by Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone,
albeit guests are often present. As of February 2016, there have been almost 200 editions of the show, totaling almost 7 million minutes watched, a half
million video views and 33 thousand playlist views.[20]

Show-and-Tell
Show-and-Tell is Adafruit's live show where makers from all around the world come in and share the electronic projects that they are currently working
on. The show is at 7:30 PM ET every Wednesday, runs for 30 minutes and is directly preceding Ask an Engineer. It is hosted by Limor Fried and
Phillip Torrone and is using the Google+ Hangouts platform. Over the four years that it has been running for, Show-and-Tell has been produced more
than 200 times, collecting more than 2.8 million minutes watched, about 500k video views and 27k playlist views.[20]

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Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern

Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern was Adafruit's live show dedicated to the wearable electronics industry. It was hosted by the American artist
Becky Stern, who was accompanied by a co-host. It aired every Wednesday at 2 PM ET and was produced for 122 episodes, from 2013 to 2016. More
than 2.6 million minutes were watched, with over 300k video views and 13.7k playlist plays. The last edition was streamed on February 10, 2016.[21] In
the show, industry news, projects, techniques and materials were covered and discussed. Also, viewers could ask the hosts their questions. The show
typically ran for 30 minutes.[20]

3D Hangouts with Noe and Pedro Ruiz

Just as the previous show was dedicated to the wearable electronics industry, 3D Hangouts with Noe and Pedro Ruiz goes over the 3D printing industry
(most typically about desktop FDM printers). Every week, on Thursday, a 30-minute edition is released where the two brothers discuss news about the
industry, specific projects that they are working on, share 3D printing tips and tricks and answer viewer's questions and comments. They also showcase
projects and prints from the online community. A discount code for 10% off (only for the night) on everything in the Adafruit shop except for software
and gift cards is given as well. The show was started in 2014 and has been running ever since.[22] It has collected more than 1.6 million minutes
watched, more than 250k video views and more than 12.7k playlist views over the course of a little bit more than 75 episodes.[20]

See also
SparkFun Electronics
Digi-Key
Mouser Electronics
Jameco Electronics
Element 14

References
1. "How one woman turned her passion for tinkering into a $33 million business
— without a dime of funding". Tech Insider. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
2. "Women Entrepreneurs to Bet On". Retrieved February 22, 2015.
3. https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/01/27/1-million-thanks-celebrating-1000000-
orders-adafruit-thank-you-makerbusiness/
4. Rozenfeld, Monica (September 9, 2015). "How DIY Electronics Startup
Adafruit Industries Became a Multimillion-Dollar Company: IEEE Member
Limor Fried started the venture in her dorm room at MIT".
theinstitute.ieee.org. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
5. "About Adafruit". Retrieved February 22, 2015.
6. "Entrepreneur of 2012: Limor Fried". Retrieved February 22, 2015.
7. "Kinect Hack Makes Microsoft Angry, Deny its Existence". PCWorld.
Retrieved November 23, 2015.
8. "Bounty offered for open-source Kinect driver". cnet.com. Retrieved
December 9, 2015.
9. "$2,000 Bounty Put on Open-Source Kinect Drivers". wired.com. Retrieved
December 9, 2015.
10. Horsey, Julian (January 14, 2016). "Adafruit Unveils New Circuit Playground
Board To Learn About Electronics". Geeky Gadgets. Retrieved January 16,
2016.
11. "Adafruit's best open source wearables of 2015". Opensource.com. Retrieved
January 16, 2016.
12. "FLORA : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits".
www.adafruit.com. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
13. "Becky Stern : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits".
www.adafruit.com. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
14. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide/overview
15. http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9
16. https://learn.adafruit.com/
17. "An interview with Limor Fried, Founder at Adafruit". Retrieved February 22,
2015.
18. Adafruit Industries's channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/adafruit) on
YouTube
19. https://blog.adafruit.com/2015/08/26/adafruits-silver-play-button-
celebrating-100k-youtube-subscribers-ytcreators/
20. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 5, 2016.
Retrieved 2016-02-22.
21. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjF7R1fz_OOU4hKjkk2Rs0_dGk_
gvsazt
22. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjF7R1fz_OOVgpmWevin2slopw_
A3-A8Y

External links
Official website (http://www.Adafruit.com)
NeoPixel Product Page (https://www.adafruit.com/category/168)
Adafruit Learning System Landing Page (https://learn.adafruit.com/)
Adafruit YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/adafruit)

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Categories: Electronics companies of the United States Companies based in New York City Companies established in 2005
Electronic component distributors

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