Friday, July 15, 2016

Sparkfun Revives Free Day Free-For-All

Amazon Prime Day? Pshaw! Who needs an annual holiday named after yourself, when you have SparkFun's Almost Free Day coming up next week--with just cool electronics project boards? Niwot, Colorado-based online electronics retailer Sparkfun told its users this week that it is relaunching its "Free Day" as Almost Free Day, where it will be offering up a pile of its products to its users for only 1 cent each. The company said it will send 3,000 boards from its inventory to users, with a catch--users won't know which ones of the products they will receive until they arrive. The electronic project boards range from a $39.95 SparkFun Weather Shield, to a Sparkfun RedBoard Arduino ($19.95), to a bobbin of conductive thread (worth $2.95). The company had run its "Free Day" in what ended up as a free for all in 2010, 2011, and 2012, but last had to implement CAPTCHA protocols to prevent cheating, an enormous amount of traffic, and even 32 bots which its users had created in attempts to snag one of its free items.