Tour of Adafruit, the hardware hacker's 'candy store' - and more (photos)

Adafruit Industries is famous for their web show Ask An Engineer, pioneering consumer-level DIY Arduino kits, hacking the Kinect, creating wearable iNecklace and iCufflink jewelry - and much more. ZDNet recently got a personal tour of Adafruit's New York headquarters where oodles of electronics kits are shipped to makers all over the world. At the hardware hacker's "candy store" it's now time for back to school orders, and Adafruit was operating at top volume, and we got an exclusive look at Limor Freid's new kit just for home food hackers: a make-it-yourself sous-vide. Visit the gallery for highlights of our behind-the-scenes tour.

Entrance of Adafruit Industries with a poster of the founder, Limor "Ladyada" Fried from a 2011 WIRED cover.

Photo credits: Violet Blue

One of the most popular assembled electronic products from Adafruit, the open-source hardware project  "FTDI friend" that easily programs many devices - Adafruit makes thousands of these per month in the NYC factory.

Ladyada's EE bench, where she hacked the Kinect.

A bag of milled aluminum "iCufflinks" Adafruit's latest open-source wearable electronic.

Circuit boards before the small parts are "pick-and-placed" and then placed in to an IR oven.

The pick-and-place machine with dual vision cameras, Adafruit uses this to place almost microscopic parts on circuit boards in their NYC factory.

Sneak preview of Adafruit's open source  sous vide "kit" - soon you'll be able to cook meals usually found only at high end restaurants with a DIY kit. So far Adafruit has cooked salmon, eggs and steak.