Just picked up some addressable LED strips from Pololu.com, for a pretty good discount on their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale:
Got 2x 2m 60 LED/m strips, for $27.12 each (these run around $25/m from Adafruit, so that’s nearly half the cost).
PLUS, they have a deal where you can get a 10-pack of PTH WS2811 addressable LEDs (I got the huge 8mm ones) for $1 with each LED strip you buy.
So basically, I got 240 blinkies in two 2 meter strips, plus another 20 individual WS2811 blinkies, all for less than 60 bucks!
If you love blinkies, this is a good deal.
Also picked up some mini 400 point breadboards ($2.21 each after discount), some adapters, and a couple of Pololu’s A* micros (they were both well under $10, which is hard to pass up).
If you need robotics stuff, stepper motors, etc., they’ve also got deals on those as well. And if you’re looking to stock up, they start adding on discounts on the whole cart once you get to $100.
Chime in with any other BF/Cyber Monday sales you know about…I know SparkFun has some stuff for Monday…anything else?
I did a quick prototype of the backing for the stars I want to make, and I think I need to go back to the drawing board…did a test pricing at ponoko, and for 4 6" stars (3 layers), it ended up coming to almost a hundred bucks for cutting and materials.
May have to simplify the design, so I can actually afford to make them. Or I could just go with wood backings this year and make 'em myself from Masonite, I suppose.
In all seriousness, though, I tweaked the design a bit and managed to get 11 stars on a P2-sized sheet, which gets the price down to around $30 before shipping. That’s in the ballpark, at least.
One day, I’ll have my own laser cutter. Today is not that day…
It’s possible. But honestly, if it costs me, say, $45 to have Ponoko make it, vs. the time it will take me to locate a makerspace, introduce myself, find out if they have a cutter I can use, find the material, etc., I figure I’m better off with Ponoko.