How I almost got free electronics.

Lauren and I were ready for SparkFun‘s Free Day. The night before we had filled up our shopping carts with $100 worth of electronics (and some sweet t-shirts). I had filled my cart with two XBee Pro 900 RF modules with an antenna, which I have wanted ever since the FunJet UAV has been on the home page of DIY Drones. These modules have a range of up to six miles and would be great for telemetry from an UAV down to a ground station (read: laptop).

We woke up at around 10:15 AM and pointed our browsers to our shopping carts. Thankfully, SparkFun had a live countdown to follow. My dad joined a little later, and Andy and I were giving an almost play by play over Twitter. At exactly 11 AM, all of us and the rest of the Internet hit “Checkout!”

Loading… Timeout. Refresh. Loading… Timeout. Refresh. This went on for almost two hours. My dad couldn’t get registered. Lauren only ever saw her shopping cart. I timed out trying to pay for shipping. And Andy made it to the last page, but then after 1 hour, 44 minutes, and 47 seconds, Free Day ended and none of us got any electronics.

On a more positive note, SparkFun became the #1 Google search term, #sparkfun grew into a top Twitter trend, and their store got some much deserved publicity!