The Do It Yourself electronics place in Needham, MA, is awesome. If you need parts, it’s always somewhat of a pain to order online-you can choose Chinese made parts, which sometimes are questionable, and definitely are cheaper, but you wait a long time in shipping. Or you can choose parts that are slightly higher quality-or at least have better Q&A and go with Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc. The problem with those is that they’re more expensive, and they shipping is mixed between somewhat fast, to still taking a week to get a part. If you’re in a hurry, sure you can get it within a day or two, but the cost factor is worrysome. Hence the need for good planning and ordering parts ahead of time. But for those emergencies, it’s nice to have a place that you can go to scope out the parts and buy them if you need to.

And at the DIY center, they have a full line of the adafruit, sparkfun, and even actobotics from servocity. Which is awesome seeing first hand. The prices match the online prices, so there’s no saving, but to have a physical place to go and look at stuff is nerd heaven. It’s not a massive place, but it does hold a ton of parts, chips, cables, etc. Pretty much anything you need, and even kits.

As an aside, they also carry a line of 3d filament that I’ve tried in my printrbot and it is fantastic. It prints really well within my settings, gives great quality, and I haven’t had issues with it yet (PLA). You can also buy it in smaller quantites, which I did for my test rolls, and they’re still going strong.

So In closing, go visit them if you’re in Boston, they just might save your project…