Adafruit
More info
- Creator
- Limor Fried
- Released
- 2005
- Type
- Electronics manufacturer
- Website
- adafruit.com
New York company that sells electronics to hobbyists and publishes the design files for nearly everything it makes.
Limor Fried, better known as Ladyada, started the business in 2005 while at MIT, selling kits she had originally designed for herself. Today the boards are made in the company's own factory in Manhattan, and almost all of it is open hardware: schematics, PCB layouts and libraries sit on GitHub. In 2011 she became the first female engineer on the cover of Wired.
Developers mostly know it for CircuitPython, a 2017 fork of MicroPython in which the board mounts as a USB drive and code runs the moment the file is saved. Feather boards and NeoPixel addressable LEDs turn up in practically every makerspace, and the tutorials have taught more people to solder than any school.