Hackster Holidays 2025 Gift Guide for Makers

It’s hard to believe, but the holiday season is here once again! So get your decorations hung, your hot chocolate warming, your fireplace prepared, your ugly sweater cleaned, and most importantly — your 2025 shopping lists and gift ideas ready. No, I don’t mean gifts for friends and family, I mean gifts for you!

As usual, there is no shortage of great hardware and projects out there, but if you are looking to narrow down your list to a few standout devices or electronics, here are are some solid choices that are useful, fun, or possibly both.

Pro tip: Santa will know what these are, but if you are asking friends or family for these kinds of items, you may want to also give them a description and a link to buy — otherwise who knows what you’ll end up with!

Thus, in no particular order, here are the top picks on my wishlist this year. (Hint, hint.)

Flir Thermal Camera

First up is an easy one, a Flir thermal imaging camera. These are great for a variety of uses around the house, even beyond the most likely scenario of taking pictures of microcontrollers and single board computers. And even if I can just touch a CPU and estimate if it’s cold, warm, hot, or just about melted, a day might come when I need to know *exactly* how hot that processor really is. Flir sells a variety of units from entry level up to professional measuring and inspection equipment, but for the hobbyist a great choice is the Cx-Series handheld unit, or the Flir ONE series which connects to an iPhone or Android device. The C3-X is a standalone device with a 128x96 pixel thermal sensor, a built-in LCD, Wi-Fi connectivity, and 5MP resolution. For even more convenience there is the Flir Edge Pro, which attaches directly to your smartphone, and has a 160x120 pixel thermal sensor with a whopping -4°F to 752°F inspection range. And if you measure an MCU or CPU above 700°F, you should probably go ahead and put a new one of those on your shopping list as well, because it won’t be lasting very long at that temperature.

Hugging Face LeRobot

Robotics projects are always great fun, but when assembling a unit yourself from parts (as opposed to purchasing a ready-made kit) they can be time consuming… so the holidays are a great opportunity to focus on a new build. Throughout the year I have seen lots of developers building and hacking on the Hugging Face LeRobot SO-100 and SO-101, and there was a global Hackathon devoted to the topic over the summer as well. Considering this is a holiday gift guide, I’m inclined to make it easy on you (or your beloved family member purchasing this for you), and just recommend a ready-made kit from PartaBot. But, as mentioned, if you have the time on your hands and want to go through the build yourself, then the parts list is nicely documented with purchase links for everything you need, here in the GitHub repo. Either way, this is definitely the robot I’m checking out next!

Arduino UNO Q

Honestly, any Arduino could go on my holiday shopping list, because there’s no such thing as a bad Arduino… but if I have to choose I’ll go with the new Arduino UNO Q that was recently launched. This new UNO Q has both a CPU and an MCU onboard, allowing for Debian Linux, Python, and the new AppLab development environment to run on the Dragonwing 2210 CPU cores, and traditional Sketches built with the Arduino IDE to run on the included STM32U585 microcontroller. The UNO Q follows the same form-factor and pin configuration as other UNO boards, so existing shields and add-ons work out-of-the-box, and the vast ecosystem of Arduino libraries, projects, and tutorials (many of them right here on Hackster!) should all be compatible as well. They are selling quickly, so you’ll want to purchase now in order for it to arrive in time for the holidays!

Scalextric Digital ArcPro Platinum Slot Car Track

Over the past few months, I’ve been fortunate enough to show off a really cool Edge Impulse object detection demo at conferences and tradeshows that uses the Scalextric ARC PRO Platinum 1/32 Slot Car Track. The demo is awesome because we setup the track, the controllers, and have booth visitors race each other, while showing off both computer vision and sensor-based edge AI workloads. But a side effect is that I have gotten pretty good at racing this set, and the vehicles are way too fast for the track at wide-open throttle, so you need to practice and learn the track in order to keep your vehicle on the course and reduce your lap times! I had forgotten how much fun slot cars are, and they've come a long way since I was a kid... the ARC PRO also has an iPad or Android app that can control races, set throttle response, and more. The vehicles on my childhood set sure didn't look like this, either.

Bonus Gift: Slate Electric Truck

Now, if for some reason you think you have been VERY good this year, and Santa is going to want something much larger to put under your tree, then my recommendation is the Slate electic pickup truck. One look at the Slate website and you can see that this is the ultimate hacker pickup truck, because it is basically a blank slate that you customize and make your own. There are a variety of body styles, wraps, dashboards, doors, and more that you choose from when building and buying the Slate, and you can always change configurations later too. It's sort of like a Lego vehicle. And by modern standards, it not that pricey either... Slate is claiming a starting price in the mid-20,000 range USD. But if you think you were really well behaved and deserve a large gift this year, I say add it to your list!