Spark Fun and the Bulgarian electronics connection

Imagine you’re an engineering student and your microcontroller programmer has just burned out in an unfortunate series of events. You’re a student so you don’t have a lot of money to replace the programmer. What do you do? Probably not what Nathan Seidle did. He found a replacement for a good price from Olimex, Ltd, a Bulgarian electronics manufacturer. Seidle replaced his programmer and then went further. He became a distributor for Olimex products. Thus was born Spark Fun Electronics of Boulder, Colorado.

These days, Spark Fun also designs its own products. One of those products is the BOB-00199 CP2103 breakout board I used for building an optical interface to Old 97, my old Fluke Scopemeter. Spark Fun offers several similar small boards that are just darn useful for experiments.

However, experimenting hardware engineers are not Seidle’s target audience. He wants to attract what he calls the creative types who don’t have much (or any) technical knowledge but have an application idea they want to explore. Spark Fun’s products are designed to appeal to such people. In addition, the company’s Web site contains several tutorials explaining the concepts and the technology behind the products offered.

Spark Fun is one of several examples of small companies I’ve recently found that package electronics technology for a wider audience, something that Heathkit did in its heyday. I think these companies are extremely interesting. If you know of such a company, how about leaving a comment and sharing the information with others?

Thanks