Need a gift idea for that special person in your life? A present that inspires his or her creative side is always a good option. With the holiday season officially underway, we’ve rounded up a few guides to help with your search, ranging from kits for young Makers to stocking stuffers for techies. Whatever you choose, be sure to spend over $150/€100 and take advantage of our FREE SHIPPING all December long!

UNDER THE TREE: BUNDLES & KITS
Who needs toys when you can build your own inventions?

• Arduino and Genuino Starter Kit – It’s a classic! With 15 projects, this kit is the perfect starting point for anyone looking to tinker around with electronics and coding. Available also in German, Spanish and Italian!

• MKR1000 Bundle – Ready to spend your holiday break building your first Internet of Things device? The MKR1000 Bundle is based on our powerful Wi-Fi board and includes all the components needed to add connectivity to your design.

• Road to Santa Claus Kit - Remember the old advent calendar? Well, we’re giving it an IoT twist with the brand-new MKR1000-based Road to Santa system! Step-by-step instructions on how to assemble the kit can be found on our Project Hub!

Explore more bundles and kits!

YOUNG MAKERS
Let kids unwrap their imagination

• littleBits Premium Kit – Might as well call it a box o’ fun! With this set, kids can learn the basics of electronics, explore STEAM principles and form the foundations of critical thinking, all while creating whirring, buzzing gadgets. The littleBits Premium Kit consists of 14 color-coded modules that magnetically snap together to form larger circuits, guaranteed to keep curious minds engaged for hours. With over 600,000 possible combinations, you can let your imagination run wild!

• Bare Conductive Celebration Circuit Set – Create three flashing greeting cards using Electric Paint. This interactive kit guides users through drawing a circuit, and attaching LEDs and batteries.

Browse more gifts perfect for Young Makers!

STOCKING STUFFERS
Boards, books, and other goodies!

• Yún Shield – A powerful IoT shield that brings Yún features to your Arduino or Genuino, enabling you to remotely upload sketches to your boards. Connecting to your WiFi network is simplified with the Yún Web Panel and dedicated ”YunFirstConfig” sketch.

• Arduino and Genuino T-Shirt – Wear your Maker pride with this gray Uno shirt.

Find more stocking stuffers!

Over the last couple of years, cat videos have become the undisputed champions of the web. Whether it’s kittens playing with their shadows to failed jump attempts to giving each another massages, we’re all guilty of watching a few of these clips from time to time (yes, even at work). Built with this in mind, oCat is a real-time tracker for feline-related activity on the Internet.

oCat consists of two parts: the oCat News Distractor and the Kitty o’Cat Twitter bot. Using Google’s YouTube API, the system works by continuously monitoring for new uploads, the number of new views each day, or a specific video that has received a remarkable amount of attention. It then tweets these stats and prints them out on thermal paper, stamping a paw print on the timeline for every 1,000 views.

Created by Annika Engelhardt, a digital media design master’s student at the University of the Arts in Bremen, oCat uses an Arduino along with an ESP Wi-Fi module, a servo, and an LCD screen. The aim of the project is to increase and reveal the amount of hours people spend watching cat videos online.

The cat is an altered Maneki-neko, holding a stamp using welding wire and hot glue. Even though I filled the stamp with extra ink, it did not work properly and I had to cut out the paw-shape from a sponge and glue it onto the original stamp.

The thermal printer used in the device needs a USB connection, so I used a Raspberry Pi to control it. I wrote a Python script that checks four different RSS news feeds for new posts every 15 minutes and prints one headline with a timestamp every minute.

The Twitter bot was programmed using Python and a library called tweepy. Most of the script is reading JSON files, juggling and comparing data and text files and in the end mixing up parts of a sentence to form a tweet. The bot will be enhanced in the future

Engelhardt exhibited the project at Galerie Flut in Bremen back in October. You can find more pictures and information on the project here.

Interactive kinetic installations are always incredible to see in action, but they become even more awesome when they’re part of a performance. As in the case of Infinite Delta, which is the result of Boris Chimp 504 + Alma D’ Arame’s artistic residency at Montemor-o-Novo in Portugal.

Using Arduino boards, they built a physical structure comprised of triangular planes that swing back and forth like a pendulum, controlled by a series of servo motors. Light is projected onto the moving structures, creating patterns that are then reflected onto a nearby wall. Infinite Delta also modifies its shape in response to the movement and sound of the audience.

In Euclidean geometry any three points, when non-collinear, form a unique triangle and determine a unique plane. Nevertheless, in quantum physics the string theory proposes that fundamental particles may also have similarities with a string. It also states that the universe is infinite and in it all matter is contained. In this “multiverse”, our universe would be just one of many parallel existent universes. What would happen then if we multiply triangles infinitely? Could or would we have access to those parallel universes?

The performers augmented the physical world by overlaying it into the digital world to produce a new alternative, magic and hyper-sensorial landscape.

Last year, we featured an awesome audiovisual project from ANGLE that applied videomapping techniques to their livesets. Now, the Florence-based duo is back with their latest A/V system, “Shining Back,” which was designed in collaboration with JoinT Studio’s Stefano Bonifazi.

Essentially, it’s a grid structure consisting of LED lights that pulse in a geometric matrix to the duo’s live rhythms. The installation runs on an Arduino Uno and uses Mad Mapper and Modul8 software.

The immersive atmosphere created by the music is emphasized by a new research in the visual realm. Taking an architectural form of a kaleidoscope the lighting visually weaves and refracts the music into a surreal yet symbiotic form.

Last year, we featured an awesome audiovisual project from ANGLE that applied videomapping techniques to their livesets. Now, the Florence-based duo is back with their latest A/V system, “Shining Back,” which was designed in collaboration with JoinT Studio’s Stefano Bonifazi.

Essentially, it’s a grid structure consisting of LED lights that pulse in a geometric matrix to the duo’s live rhythms. The installation runs on an Arduino Uno and uses Mad Mapper and Modul8 software.

The immersive atmosphere created by the music is emphasized by a new research in the visual realm. Taking an architectural form of a kaleidoscope the lighting visually weaves and refracts the music into a surreal yet symbiotic form.

Arduino boards can certainly be used to create homebrew connected devices, but that doesn't mean it's easy. What if you're a rookie who has yet to master programming or wiring? That's where Arduino's new, crowdfunded ESLOV kit might save the day. All you have to do to create a basic Internet of Things device is snap in some plug-and-play modules, connect your creation to your PC and draw connections between those modules in an editor. You only have to dive into serious programming if you have specific needs -- there's ready-made code for common devices like air quality sensors, baby monitors and remote-controlled thermostats.

Source: Kickstarter, Arduino Blog

Arduino boards can certainly be used to create homebrew connected devices, but that doesn't mean it's easy. What if you're a rookie who has yet to master programming or wiring? That's where Arduino's new, crowdfunded ESLOV kit might save the day. All you have to do to create a basic Internet of Things device is snap in some plug-and-play modules, connect your creation to your PC and draw connections between those modules in an editor. You only have to dive into serious programming if you have specific needs -- there's ready-made code for common devices like air quality sensors, baby monitors and remote-controlled thermostats.

A new version of the Arduino IDE (1.6.12) supporting OSX Sierra is available for download! All OSX users updating to Sierra are invited to also update the IDE to avoid crashes when uploading sketches.

This update includes an experimental integration with Arduino Cloud API already used by Arduino Create. The Arduino Cloud is simple tool to connect your Arduinos to the Internet and to each other. From now on, when you insert for the first time an Arduino/Genuino or AtHeart board which needs an additional core, you will be prompted to automagically install its bundled software.

You’ll notice that the example menu has been reorganized, making it much more consistent and easier to navigate.

We’ve released version 1.0.7 of Curie core as well, which is a transitional release guiding us towards 2.0.0 with BLE central role and a lot of other goodies. You can read all the details on the forum.

Joining a list of others from Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal, Europe’s latest Genuino reseller hails from The Netherlands! Let’s give a warm welcome to Pieter Floris, who we recently had a chance to catch up with to learn a little more about the work he’s been doing with Floris.cc!

- Tell us a bit more about Floris.cc.

Early in 2009, I was searching for a good “learning kit for Arduino” for use in a physical computing course at Communication & Multimedia Design (CMD Avans University – Breda). I found the ARDX kit from Oomlout. I had some email contact with Aaron from Oomlout, got a list of components, started gathering parts, composing kits, and a few weeks later, Floris.cc was born. The ARDX kit was my first product (including the Arduino Duemilanove at that time). In the years following business was growing, I started reselling Adafruit, Sparkfun, Pololu, and I was even one of the first shops outside the U.S. reselling the Teensy boards. I still focus on education, making lots of kits for schools and universities.

- What’s your company’s super power?

A group of students from Farmington, Connecticut partnered with artist Balam Soto and master teachers Earl Procko and Jim Corrigan to create a community-based sculpture project that allows people to explore the sights, sounds and history of their town through new media.

The installation runs on Arduino Uno and XBee, and is comprised of two panels which act as viewing screens for multiple visual projections. Visitors can interact with the display and manipulate the images using 24 buttons placed on the physical map. Plus, they are encouraged to record and add their own stories and memories of Farmington to the ever-growing multimedia library.

Permanently exhibited in Farmington’s public library, the Farmington Map Project was also the opportunity to introduce the students to physical computing, digital fabrication, woodworking, Arduino programming, and to the potential that Makerspaces have to offer for bringing ideas to life.

The project was created with the support of an Arts in Education Mini-Grant, funded by the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Department of Economic and Community Development, the Connecticut Office of the Arts, and the Connecticut Association of Schools, Farmington High School’s Fine and Applied Arts.

Interested? Check it out on Hackster.