Technical Support: What We Can Help With
We're a stockist. We carry thousands of different parts from hundreds of manufacturers: Raspberry Pi, Adafruit, SparkFun, DFRobot, Pimoroni, Seeed, ELECFREAKS, Waveshare, micro:bit and many more. We get them to your door quickly, at a fair price, with real people answering the phone.
We're not the design team behind those products. This page sets out what we help with, what we don't, and where the good help lives, so you know what to expect before you ask.
The short version: we'll help you choose the right part, sort out anything to do with your order, and replace anything faulty. We don't provide free engineering support: debugging your circuit, writing or fixing your code, or designing a system out of parts from a dozen different manufacturers. That work belongs with the people who designed the products and the communities that use them every day, and they're better at it than we could ever be. Their contact details are all listed below.
What We're Always Happy to Help With
- Choosing the right part before you buy: which board suits the job, whether two things are compatible, which cable or connector you need, what's in the box, what else you'll need to get going. Ask us before you order. That's the moment we're most useful.
- Anything about your order: stock, lead times, ETAs, delivery, tracking, invoices, purchase orders, quotes, changes and cancellations.
- Faulty or dead-on-arrival products: if something doesn't work as it should, that's a warranty matter rather than a support matter. See Return Policy and Requesting a Return. Your rights under Australian Consumer Law apply regardless of anything on this page.
- Finding the official documentation: datasheets, pinouts, schematics, code samples and manufacturer repositories. Where we have them, we publish them on the product page.
- Pointing you to the right place: the manufacturer's docs, forum or support desk for the exact product you're using. The table below covers every brand we stock.
- Escalating product problems: if documentation looks wrong, a batch looks off, or there's a fault with a product line, we'll take it up with the manufacturer or distributor on your behalf. That's a conversation we can have that you often can't.
- Our own products: anything under the Little Bird brand, including EagLED, Crack the Code and our DIY kits, we designed and we support. Email us.
What We Don't Provide
We don't offer free technical support for products we didn't design or manufacture. In practice that means we can't:
- Debug your circuit or your code: wiring faults, soldering problems, sketches that won't compile, libraries that won't install, drivers, toolchains, or IDE and operating-system problems on your own computer.
- Design or troubleshoot a whole system: projects that combine parts from several manufacturers, often alongside components we didn't supply, are engineering work. Nobody can diagnose that reliably without the hardware in front of them.
- Support products you bought somewhere else: the retailer or manufacturer you bought from is the right first stop. They know what they sold you and which revision it was.
- Act as the manufacturer's support desk: for deep product questions, the people who designed the board are the right people to ask, and most of them run public forums staffed by their own engineers.
- Provide ongoing project mentoring: help with assignments, capstone projects, product development or commercial builds is consulting work rather than retail support.
Why We Draw the Line Here
- We didn't design these products. Answering a hard question about an ESP32 peripheral or a sensor's I²C quirks properly means knowing that silicon deeply. The engineers who designed it do. We'd be guessing, and a confident guess is worse than no answer.
- The maths doesn't work. A $4 sensor can't carry an hour of engineering time. If it did, it would be a $200 sensor. Keeping support focused is part of how we keep prices low and stock deep.
- There are better sources. The Raspberry Pi and Adafruit forums, manufacturer Discords and project communities have thousands of people who have already built the thing you're building. You'll usually get a better answer there, and faster.
- We'd rather be excellent at a few things. Getting the right parts to you fast, at a good price, with honest stock information and a real warranty.
Support Contacts for Every Brand We Stock
Go straight to the manufacturer. Have your product name, the revision or SKU, and a photo of your wiring ready, and you'll usually get a reply within a day or two.
Boards, modules and displays
| Brand | Where to get help |
|---|---|
| Adafruit | forums.adafruit.com (they support customers of official Adafruit distributors, which includes us), guides at learn.adafruit.com, adafruit.com/support |
| SparkFun | community.sparkfun.com (the old forum.sparkfun.com redirects here) |
| DFRobot | dfrobot.com/forum, documentation at wiki.dfrobot.com |
| Raspberry Pi | forums.raspberrypi.com (Raspberry Pi engineers post there), raspberrypi.com/contact |
| Pimoroni | forums.pimoroni.com, tutorials at learn.pimoroni.com |
| Seeed Studio | forum.seeedstudio.com, documentation at wiki.seeedstudio.com |
| Waveshare | waveshare.com/wiki for per-product guides, tickets at service.waveshare.com |
| Pololu | forum.pololu.com, pololu.com/contact |
| Elecrow | forum.elecrow.com, elecrow.com/wiki, elecrow.com/pages/contact-us |
| Keyestudio | wiki.keyestudio.com and docs.keyestudio.com, keyestudio.com/pages/contact-us |
| SunFounder | docs.sunfounder.com, sunfounder.com/pages/contact-us |
| PJRC (Teensy) | forum.pjrc.com, documentation at pjrc.com/teensy |
| MonkMakes | support@monkmakes.com, kit instruction PDFs on each product page at monkmakes.com |
| The Pi Hut | support.thepihut.com, contact@thepihut.com |
micro:bit, robotics and classroom kits
| Brand | Where to get help |
|---|---|
| micro:bit Educational Foundation | support.microbit.org |
| ELECFREAKS | support@elecfreaks.com, documentation at wiki.elecfreaks.com, shop.elecfreaks.com/pages/contact |
| Kitronik | kitronik.co.uk/pages/contact-us, tutorials and code at kitronik.co.uk/blogs/resources |
| 4tronix | sales@4tronix.co.uk, shop.4tronix.co.uk/pages/contact-us, build guides on 4tronix.co.uk/blog |
| Yahboom | support@yahboom.com, category.yahboom.net/pages/contact-us |
| Makeblock | support.makeblock.com |
| Sphero and littleBits | help.sphero.com, support@sphero.com (Sphero handles littleBits support) |
| Edison (Microbric) | meetedison.com/edison-robot-support, Australian phone support on +61 8 7094 0791 |
| Ozobot | ozobot.com/pages/technical-support |
| BirdBrain (Hummingbird, Finch) | birdbraintechnologies.com/support |
| Modular Robotics (Cubelets) | modrobotics.com/knowledge-base, modrobotics.com/contact-modular-robotics |
| MakeKit (air:bit, hover:bit) | makekit.no/en/docs/airbit-docs, troubleshooting at makekit.no/en/airbit-troubleshooting |
Making, craft and puzzle kits
| Brand | Where to get help |
|---|---|
| Upper Story (Turing Tumble, Spintronics) | store-au.upperstory.com/pages/help-center, hello@upperstory.com, education@upperstory.com for school questions. Their help centre covers missing or broken parts, sticking levers and gear problems. |
| Chibitronics | chibitronics.com/faq, chibitronics.com/contact-us |
| Makedo | make.do/pages/contact |
| Little Bird | Ours. Email team@littlebirdelectronics.com.au |
Bought something from us that isn't listed here? Email us and we'll tell you who made it and where their support lives.
Other Places to Get Good Help
- The datasheet: unglamorous, and it answers most questions about voltages, current draw, pinouts and timing. We link them on product pages wherever they exist.
- Our free guides and build lists: our project build lists and buying guides walk through complete projects with every part listed. See Project Build Lists.
- Code samples and repositories on the product page: many products include working example code and a link to the maintained GitHub repository.
- An AI assistant: modern AI models are good at electronics troubleshooting. Every product page on our site is available as clean Markdown by adding
.mdto the URL, so you can paste the exact specifications straight into a chat. See Markdown Endpoints and LLMs & AI Agents. - Local maker communities: hackerspaces, maker groups and university clubs around Australia are full of people who'll look at your board over a coffee.
"It's Not Working": Faulty, or Not Yet Working?
These are two different things, and which one you have decides what happens next.
- Faulty: the product doesn't do what it's meant to do out of the box. It won't power up, it's physically damaged, or a known-good example of the same thing behaves differently. That's ours to fix, and we will. Start a return and we'll sort out a replacement or refund.
- Not yet working: the part is fine, but the project isn't doing what you want yet. That's the normal, enjoyable, occasionally maddening business of building things, and the manufacturer's forum will serve you better than we can.
If you're not sure which one you've got, ask us. Sorting that out is part of standing behind what we sell.
Schools, Businesses and Volume Orders
If you're specifying a class set, a kit for a course, or a build for a commercial product, get in touch before you order. We can help scope the bill of materials, confirm long-term availability, check compatibility across a kit, and raise questions with the manufacturer on your behalf. That's pre-sales work we're glad to do, and it's a different thing from ongoing engineering support after delivery.
Ask Us Before You Buy
The most useful question you can ask us is "will this work for what I'm doing?", asked before you place the order. We'd rather spend five minutes making sure you order the right thing than process a return later.
Email team@littlebirdelectronics.com.au or use our contact page. If your question is one for the manufacturer, we'll say so and point you straight to them.
