News

The Box Craze Hits Engineering

December 10, 2015 by Jennifer A. Diffley

Subscription boxes are targeting everyone from preppers to disc golfers. Electrical engineers now have their own set of boxes delivering monthly goodies.

Monthly subscriptions have always been a thing. Executives are famous for sending out wine of the month club memberships to clients and Harry & David have been doling out monthly boxes of fruit since my parents were kids. Somehow within the last few years, the monthly subscription thing reached craze status. There are boxes for pretty much everything, and they're getting increasingly weirder. The Dive Bar Shirt Club will, well, send you a t-shirt every month from a dive bar. The Bug Out Box will send you items in preparation for the apocalypse. Heck, there's even a monthly box for disc golfers. I mean, come on: disc golf. Naturally, designers aren't immune to the monthly subscription frenzy, so we've dug up a few that will either have you rolling your eyes or reaching for your debit card.

Quarterly

The concept behind Quarterly is unique in that you get to choose who curates your monthly box, and those curators are all innovators and early adopters, from Bill Nye to Kevin Rose. The boxes aren't cheap, but they could provide a needed dose of monthly inspiration.

The GoBox

The GoBox is a robot kit delivered to your door every quarter. You'll receive a GoPiGo robot car kit, then missions to complete such as making a light sensor. It's a good box for kids who have no background with electronics, and it would be ideal for keeping them engaged with various projects throughout the year.

Thimble

This box is cool because it's a subscription-based projects box that isn't just for kids. You'll have a new electronics device every month, and having all the components shipped to your door is a nice reprieve from sourcing everything yourself. It's currently on Kickstarter, too, so you have a chance to get the box for less and help the idea move forward.

Tinker Crate

The Tinker Crate is another monthly box for kids, but it offers a range of STEM experiments and divides them by age so your child won't be stuck with projects that are too easy or too hard.

HackerBoxes

HackerBoxes deliver dev kits and other goodies to make a variety of projects. They also have a community of support in case you want to expand on projects or run into any issues. 

ProtoCrate

This box is for the avid 3D printer and comes with high quality filaments along with tools and samples to help you make a new 3D project every month. 

 

There's no telling how long the box craze will last, but it's worth checking out for a bit. If nothing else, you've got something cool to look forward to and some new projects to work on. And that can't be a bad thing.

1 Comment