Reminder: 1/7/10 is SparkFun Free Day (get a free Arduino) | Hacker News Reader

10 is SparkFun Free Day (get a free Arduino)

sparkfun.com

46 pointslarrykubin69 comments

It's over now... I could never get the actual page to load, but the error message was in the URL, saying Free Day has ended.

I made it to the final page of the order confirmation process with $72k left to give away and could never get past it.

Same here. Worst part is that I started with an account signed up, a full shopping cart, and my address already entered the moment it started.

Still never got the payment to go through.

Wasted my entire morning. Still contemplating on getting at least an Arduino Starter Kit...

I'm going to get the starter kit, but since I have to pay for it, it's cheaper from Hacktronics. They call it something else, but it looks to be the same kit, or maybe better, for my purposes.

http://www.hacktronics.com/Arduino/Arduino-Educational-Learn...

I wanted "Programming Interactivity" as well, which is cheaper on Amazon.

Nice find. Their ethernet shield is cheaper too. (I need to fight the urge to buy more shields...).

Sadly hacktronics is US-only, whereas sparkfun is not.

I was going for that too, but wanted the "Making Things Talk" book (which is also cheaper on Amazon). Getting the individual pieces for the kit on sparkfun was also cheaper than getting the kit, and you could get a full size breadboard too. Thanks for the find.

Hmm, I never thought to price them individually. I'd just assumed that the kit would be cheaper. I wonder how many kits they sell based on that assumption? Oh well. Even with shipping from hacktronics it was still $5 cheaper than sparkfun's base price before shipping. I built radios and stuff as a kid, but I've never done any micro-controller programming... should be fun. :)

Couldn't get past the credit card page. Guess I'll get back to work now.

I've tried a bunch of times to replicate the URL message that you are seeing but I have been unable to.. I thought everything was supposed to go on until 11pm...

Well, this campaign certainly worked for me. I have filled my cart with over $150 worth of electronics, and I'm already excited enough about it that I will buy it whether I get the discount or not.

Added to that, this is the first time I've actually bought anything from sparkfun, and browsing around the store, I realize that it's a lot better than my previously preferred seller (although being on the 'wrong' side of the Atlantic is a drawback).

This is my Arduino shopping list, for anyone already with an Arduino: almost exactly $100

Arduino Ethernet Shield $45.95

Arduino ProtoShield Kit $16.95

GPS Shield $16.95

Joystick Shield $4.95

microSD Shield $14.95

total: $99.75

(I realise I dont have a GPS unit for that shield or the joystick parts - but they will be in a bin somewhere at work :))

Seems they are going to have a hard time giving away $100,000. They have given away $2,952 in 26 minutes. At that rate they will have given away $13k by the end of their 2 hour limit.

Interesting from a game theory perspective: If everyone had cooperated to select 1000 people to get it, the total winnings would be higher.

Edit: And if it wasn't obvious, the "slow" rate is caused by extremely slow servers.

The time limit was until 11pm.. so 14 hours not 2

Ah, thanks! I completely missed that; being a Norwegian AM/PM illiterate.

I guess the $100,000 they're going to save by being down for the sale duration will pay for some nice infrastructure upgrades.

Their servers are really taking a beating... They must be in panic mode at the moment.

Methinks they probably should have invested in way more caching in preparation for this day...

Well, I was hoping to get some free parts for my RepRap project. Oh well, I guess I'll just order them tomorrow.

A bit frustrating to get all the way to the final order page and then have the site crap out...

You made it all the way to the final order page? After two hours I was able to get a few items in my cart and have -almost- managed to create an account.

Wow, you actually need to create an account to order? I suppose there's no way I'm getting through that gauntlet before the $100k runs out.

edit: In case you want to create an account in parallel while you're waiting, see https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/create_account.php

yeh fraid so.

I dropped in earlier today (about 9am GMT) and it was a little slow - but I managed to make an account and fill a basket..

Now it wont load though... bah (considering going through a US proxy to see if that improves things).

Not necessarily. Based on the running total ($1400 or so) it looks like only 14 people have managed to place an order so far.

I also had a basket filled beforehand. So far, I've gotten as far as the basket screen, but haven't made it to checkout yet.

I'm stuck trying to enter an address. Already re-entered it 3 times...

Looks like SFE is going to have a fun customer experience situation on their hands - how they deal with the collapse of their website will go a long way towards burnishing (or burning) their "friendly neighbourhood electronics supplier" brand.

Quick, someone write a Chrome extension that alerts me with a really loud sound if the page loads and refreshes until it successfully does so.

I'm tired, and I want to go back to sleep. Must. Get. Free. Stuff.

I'm like a kid in a candystore on their site. So far the only thing I really want is the Arduino starter kit http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i... Everything else are parts, supplies, and replacement tools. I haven't done hardware development since college, so I'm hoping my surgeon-like skills at wielding a solder pencil hasn't been diminished by banging on keyboards.

Rats. Filled my cart with goodies and now the site's hosed. Still 2 hours to go.

Hang in there sparkfun guys. Its going to be a wild, wild day!

It looks like I'm one of the fortunate few who managed to place an order. I had an account set up beforehand but didn't have my cart full until 10:45am or so. SparkFun was, indeed, exceedingly slow but my tactic of pressing "refresh" every minute or so seems to have paid off. I'd say it was an hour's worth of effort in total. Best of luck and keep trying!

What was the page you saw after clicking sth like "Yes, i want to get this stuff by Sprakfun Free Day"? I was able to get only to that moment and the next site (after a milion of "refresh") is just blank... Do you know anything about it?

The page went blank for me too after pressing "yes, I want free stuff..." but refreshing that blank page 10-20 times got me to a "congratulations" page with a SparkFun guy wearing a crown and an order email in my inbox (though my order total, which was well over $100, didn't reflect the $100 off I'm assuming it came through...but I saved the congrats page just to be sure).

I appear to be stuck on the shipping address page--just refreshing when the connection craps doesn't seem to work. Anything in particular you tried?

Honestly, for me it was just refreshing every time the connection crapped out. Nothing else seemed to work. I bet they're getting hammered now though so it may take longer than the hour I got away with at 11am.

I started over 3 hours with filling the shopping cart... I'm about to just give up, $100 isn't worth this much PITA...

Oh man, that's rough. According to Pahalial, above, they had to restart apache so it may be worth trying again in a while when they have things sorted out more and when the blank screen frustration's worn off...a bit.

Any suggestions on a kit / parts for a novice?

AVR dev board with a bunch of bells and whistles, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

Bus Pirate http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

3 Axis accelerometer with SPI interface, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

Digital Temp Sensor, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i... http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

Pressure sensor, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

XBee adapter board and Xbee module, http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

pmorici has good recs (XBee is especially fun), but the Arduino starter kit alone can be found here: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...

Just as a heads up for anyone considering buying the kit regardless of the $100 off, it's actually cheaper to buy the parts in that kit individually, and it's really easy to do that because they link all the individual product pages. Not to mention if there's any parts you want to buy more of, you can get volume discounts on that. I don't remember exactly how much less, but I believe it was ~$10 or so in total.

Way fustrating for regular customers, and still having issues trying to just log in so I can check out!

Wow. As of 1:00pm EST my browser is not even sitting and trying to load... The connection immediately times out.

Perhaps they realized that the site had become unusable and have pulled the plug to try to reduce the load while implementing a fix?

I've never had to do it but I should imagine that a local reverse proxy cache should be able to be setup pretty quickly... That would definitely help them with their main pages (products etc..) and leave their servers free to deal with requests pertaining to making and placing orders.

This is all assuming that their server-side code already outputs the correct cache control headers of course...

It would appear that I was partly correct. The site is back up now and performing much, much better from what I have seen. Free Day is officially over though (apparently they gave away the whole $100k!) so perhaps the load they're seeing is now just drastically reduced...

Didn't make it. I even did all my shipping details before it started. But then again, refreshing the ckeckout started to get old and my attention went somewhere else. At least I know what's in their catalogue now!

It looks more like a self-inflicted DDOS..

...and now their IRC channel is full of pissed people:

[snip] < pissedagain> NEVER ORDER FROM SPARKFU*K !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [/snip]

PS. Edited a bit..

It would be cool to know how many of us tried this and what the result was. Timing out for me at the moment. Will post again once I have a final outcome.

They had the javascript countdown timer set to refresh the pages at exactly when the sale started. Instant server death.

Hmm, I'm seeing:

SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!

SparkFun Electronics has been temporarily closed while necessary upgrades are installed and configured. Please be patient and check back soon. We're working tirelessly to make this down time as brief as possible.

Mid-rush server upgrades?

They had to restart apache, according to IRC.

I am attempting to create an account... wish I'd known beforehand that I needed one, but HN this morning was the first I'd heard of this. It's slow going, but the good news is, it looks like if you can manage to actually get in during the 2hr period, there will still be discounts available.

It will be interesting to see whether the site is able to deal with all the extra traffic tomorrow morning

This reminds me of trying to buy playoff tickets online - an exercise in frustration that probably just ends up pissing off most of your customers. Although the PR might end up being worth it.

OMG... i had a few tabs of their site open. right this instant, they all reloaded! they're hammering their own servers, which is kinda funny.

I'm going to try modesty, but I doubt I'll be able to get through. Also, CloudFront is ideal for events like this.

> Also, CloudFront is ideal for events like this.

Interesting point. I wonder what CF's total peak load/capability is? There were almost certainly upwards of 3000 people (and I think that is a conservative guess) clicking "checkout" within moments of each other.

I want some S3 instances for free day...

Did anyone reading this actually make it through?

Can you order over the phone for this event?

No, they said that only Credit Card and Paypal Express orders are eligible.

They closed temporarily to make upgrades

1200 users in the IRC channel and counting..... I suspect it is going to be absolute luck whether you get the $100 or not...

I noticed they pulled the irc info on the "Closed" page.

Down already?

The site's been going up and down all day, despite a server upgrade. I'm not confident it will be up when the sale starts...

1/7/10

Why in the world would one choose this as the date format, if not 'forced' to do so by faithful reproduction of an external title? It seems that even on SparkFun's site they would use 2010.01.07.

I actually agree, it's very confusing. I'm European and I would write 07.01.2010.

On topic: I, too, am Arduino shopping. First I though about getting a Spartan FPGA development board, but I honestly don't think I'll have the time to learn enough to make useful things with it.

It's a really cool action by SparkFun and I hope it will be a success for them.

I'm Australian, but I work in Canada. I have never been able to get the date formatting here right all the time...

Now, whenever I have to write a date by hand I make it impossible to misread. Like so:

01/Jan/2010

Down vote at will, it's still incomprehensible as a date on first reading. And I spent most of my life in the US where this is the supposed 'preferred form.'

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