OK, it's your fault - so thank you ;-)

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HowardP
 
Posts: 94
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2015 6:42 pm

OK, it's your fault - so thank you ;-)

Post by HowardP »

Dear LadyAda and Mr. LadyAda - and all of Adafruit Industries:

It is your fault !

Yep - and don't try to deny it !

You now have a new, loyal customer here.

Well, OK, I admit it …

maybe it's my fault too.

I just binge watched the last six months of Ask an Engineer, with a healthy dose of Ms. Stern's Wearable Electronics and Mr. Ruiz' 3D Printing for good measure. Now, I'm getting food ready and prepping my comfy chair for another round of six months more.

Why?

For over 55 years, I've been doing electronics. And computers since the '70's. Nope, not tooting my horn - nor am I grumbling about disappearing gray-white hair. I mention time lived because the tech world, with me in it, has spun many many revolutions. During all that time, I have never seen such enthusiasm, support, positivity, and selfless encouragement of others to become more creative and productive as you all have been doing. Perhaps with one exception: John F. Kennedy and NASA getting humanity to the moon.

So, see - it is your fault after all !

Your almost not-of-this-world service and support is exemplary.
How could I not become a customer ?

Now please stop reading these Pre-Historic Nerd ramblings - and get back to work making Adafruit even more successful !

Sincerely and with much Techy-Love :))

- Howard in Florida

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Disciple
 
Posts: 852
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 8:13 pm

Re: OK, it's your fault - so thank you ;-)

Post by Disciple »

I'll echo that. :c)
Three months of curious browsing led to the nerve to try a peanut-sized project. With one step out of the nest, it flew. Then a client casually mentioned his concept of a grandiose sound and visual artwork. I rashly replied, "I can make that happen," and now I'm doing it and learning as I go. After decades of being the end user, transitioning to maker is quite an excursion. Thanks to Adafruit, new things are coming to life in my tiny workshop, bearing the scent of hot rosin.

Hallelujah!
Disciple

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HowardP
 
Posts: 94
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2015 6:42 pm

Re: OK, it's your fault - so thank you ;-)

Post by HowardP »

Dear Disciple,

Congratulations !

and on all accounts: your project flew on first try, you were encouraged to take on bigger things, and - perhaps most important yet subtle:

not only have you entered the higher world of a Maker, but because you've publicly announced your confidence and faith in self-fulfillment (and, of course, faith in Adafruit), you've also taken the first step towards becoming an evangelist. A technology evangelist that is :))

Although I too am in awe of Adafruit, I don't work for them. (Actually that would be wonderful!) In fact they didn't even reply to my post here :-| - which is OK - probably because the original post is so whacky huge in scope that they didn't know what to say to it. LOL. So I very much appreciate that you too appreciate what Adafruit is doing.

An aside to Adafuiters … hey wait, can I say that without being excommunicated ? ;-P … although you folks are running a business geared towards profit, I am continually impressed by the selfless dedication behind the scenes. Besides the long hours many of you clearly put in, there are subtle ways you are pushing the open source envelop, which, in turn, further enables folks like Disciple and myself.

One instance stands as a practical example: Adafruit's add on library (*link below*) for the schematic capture / PCB software, Eagle CAD (cadsoft.com). Yes, I know others like Sparkfun do similar things - and their libraries are not to shabby either - but yours has the maker / tinkerer in mind in a more BANNED way (IMO). And - lo an behold - there are also a few more advanced items in there too. Sorry for the wordiness. This is hard to articulate. What you put into that library, how you design many of your products, could be called:
  • "teaching beginners the basics but from an advanced, expert perspective."
What do I mean by that?

You include a component in that library, or put a tweak on a board - something *you* discovered and realized it was useful before we knew it was. Sure, this is superb customer service - one could argue - but I've seen for a while how you all go way above and beyond what you have to do to provide such stellar service. You don't have to do this, but you do because you know it is good and right (righteous :).

Honestly, I'm not just saying these things to win points. As mentioned, I've been around the block - was born before the transistor :-/ - the only other company that comes close in "customer care" is Parallax. And for me, they were the epitome, the height to which others must reach. You've been to the mountain and back - and built a new mountain much higher. And I don't mean this as hyperbole: Adafruit gives me hope that businesses will grow consistently beyond being merely ethical. (And who knows - although maybe this is really pushing it - maybe there is even hope that someday Men will become proper engineers too. :)

- Howard in Florida
------------------------
References:
(*) Adafruit Eagle Library: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Eagle-Library
PS - the instructions need updating. Eagle now recognizes a lib when it's just unzipped into its own folder under [eagle-version]/lbr and does so without having to restart Eagle. Nice!

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ViralCipher
 
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Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2014 9:44 pm

Re: OK, it's your fault - so thank you ;-)

Post by ViralCipher »

Great post Howard. Adafruit has helped me as well so much it has changed my life. I'm only 26 years old and I have always been into software development and web development and I never did anything about electronics until I purchased a Raspberry Pi back in August of last year. I was planning to use it for software only, but I then discovered all the cool projects with the Raspberry Pi and I also discovered the Arduino and the Adafruit website and found out that I don't really need to have an electrical engineering degree or even a computer science degree to get into this stuff. My degree focused on application and web development for business applications but I discovered even some of those skills can be applied to these maker and IoT projects at least on the programming side. My JavaScript skills come in handy because of how Node. Js can be used for example.

If it wasn't for Adafruit I would not have gotten so far. I went from having zero electronics experience to learning how to solder and doing some simple but fun projects from Adafruit's great tutorials. Of course I had a few very discouraging moments and the worst moment was when I accidentally purchased a 12v power supply and used it to power 3 meters of 5v Neopixels and burned around $60 (counting shipping) because that instantly killed the strip. Not the most incouraging thing, but that's was 100% my fault and I knew better but got overly excited. Adafruit is very good with their tutorials, and I should have paid attention to what I was using. Despite that the Adafruit community and products kept me from stopping.

Now I can't stop buying stuff from Adafruit and I have a table full of electronics and components in my room. I wish I had a work area and I may run out of space lol. I have some ideas for projects with the stuff I have and plan to buy I know Adafruit can help when I need it along the way. Wish I had a workshop, big garage or basement to work in.

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