How to Buy an Arduino Leonardo (Clone) Kit for Less than $20

Borderless Electronics Indiegogo campaign for their $9 electronics kit with an Arduino Leonardo clone went so well that the owner of the campaign decided to limit the total number of boards to 15,000, and basically stop the campaign early to avoid production delays. For $12 ($9 + shipping), you could get a full kit with:

Arduino Leonardo clone
A mini breadboard with 10 Jumper wires
A plug for a 9V battery
A few components: 6 LEDs, 10x 330 Ohm resistors, 10x 1 KOhm resistors, 3x push buttons, 2 NPN transistors, 5 diodes, a light sensor, and a sound buzzer
A micro USB to USB cable

Although they may start a new one campaign in a few months, the campaign is over, and you can’t get this cheap Arduino kit anymore.

$20 Dollars Arduino Kit: Arduino Leonardo Compatible Board with Breadboard, Jumper Wires, and Components

But one of my reader (onebir) let me know that for less than $20, you can get an Arduino Leonardo clone with a USB cable, a large Breadboard, and many components, by purchasing three items on Aliexpress,.com:

Arduino Leonardo R3 compatible development board with USB Cable – $9.48
400-tie point breadboard (8.2 x 6.2cm) with 65 jumper wires – $5
Components kit with nearly 250 components – $5

So for a total of $19.48 (all prices include free shipping), you get a full Arduino compatible electronics kit.

Here’s the content of the components kit:

210x resistors with values: 100, 1K, 4.7K, 10K, 47K, 100K, and 1M (30 pieces for each)
4x potentiometers: 2x 10K, and 2x 100K.
12x LEDs: yellow, red, green, and white (3 for each color)
6x 12*12 tact switch body
15x tact switch keys: blue circle, red circle, white circle, white square, green square (3 of each type).
2x 40 pin 2.54 pitch header

The kit does lack some fun components like a buzzer, a servo, a light sensor, etc… that you can find in Seeed Studio SideKick Basic Kit for example, but it does seem to be a decent deal nonetheless.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.