Here in Canada, we think those plucky British monarchs are pretty swell. So swell that to this day we still celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday every year on the Monday before May 25th. The fact that Queen Victoria died waaaay back in 1901 doesn’t seem to phase us at all. We’re pretty hardcore that way. So to celebrate this unique occasion, we’ll be closed on Monday, May 21. Order processing and shipping will resume again on Tuesday. Also, due some schedule maintenance on their side, our order system will be unable to offer Purolator/courier shipping from 9pm EST on Saturday to approximately 10AM on Sunday.

But before we disappear for a long weekend full of celebrations for long-dead monarchs, we’ll leave you with some new stuffs:

	Magnetic Snap 18mm $1.76 Magnets. How do they work? We’re going to guess magic. This particular set of magnets are pretty darn strong, are able to rotate freely, and conduct electricity. That’s a pretty darn good kind of magic, if you ask me.
	LilyPad LED Micro (5pcs) $3.95 Blinky lights, in all shapes and sizes, are always a good thing to have. These micro LilyPad LEDs cover the tinyend of the size spectrum. Available in white, red, yellow, blue and green.
	L6470 Stepper Driver Breakout $34.95 The Sparkfun L6470 breakout (a.k.a “dSPIN”) packs a mean punch for it’s size, it’s a 3A, 8-45V bipolar stepper motor driver! It has built-in overcurrent detection, undervoltage detection, overtemperature detection, stall detection, a 5-bit ADC, and a switch input that can be used for either user jog control or as a hard stop function. As if that weren’t enough, it also features microstepping support (up to 128 microsteps per full step) and PWM drive voltage limiting.
	LilyPad Simple Power $2.95 The LilyPad Simple Power is a board that lets you connect a battery (or other power source with a 2-pin JST connector) and switch it on or off, that’s it!
	Micro JST 2.0 PH 2-Pin Connector Plug w/ Wire $1.29 A dramatic tale of two wires. One red. One black. Joined by a single female JST connector. Of desitny.
	Mini Micro JST Connector 1.25mm 3-Pin Wired Header w/ Plug $1.49 The really tiny connectors (not to be confused with the just tiny connectors) that are used on many… tiny things. You’ll know them when you see them! This is a full set to wire up a 1.25mm spaced JST connector with wired header.

And with that, we bid you all a fantastic weekend, whether it be of the standard or long variety.

This may be our second ever post for Cool Link Wednesday, but that won’t stop us from having a special theme edition! This week we opened up our very own Solarbotics Tumblr account, where we’ll be posting some behind-the-scenes stuff with an R’n'D flavour. What kind of stuff, exactly? Today we had the second session of a machining workshop, where our resident expert handyman, Reg, showed us how to grind our own lathe toolings out of steel, and basic operations of putting it to work in the lathe itself. We’ve also covered some kit modifications and prototypes/tests, and will continue to keep some new content coming out fairly regularly.

What else? More Tumblr! Here are some of the other accounts that have been keeping us occupied for the last little while:

• We <3 Robots
• Oomlout
• Evil Made Scientist

Question: What ever happened to punch cards? Nobody really knows, but the world became a much much darker place without them. There was something undeniably magical about making a computer do your bidding through feeding it a piece of paper with a bunch of holes in it (“THE ULTIMATE POWER IS MINE! I CAN NOW FIND OUT THE SUM OF TWO SINGLE-DIGIT NUMBERS!”).

Lets Make Robots user isotope is bringing punch cards into the future. He has developed a drawing robot that it programmable by feeding it with black and white paper strips. Check it out:

Aside from the GMPW wheels and motors for muscle, the LogoTurtleBot is rocking a Freeduino SB and Protoshield for brains. isotope has done a lot of fantastic things with this build – aside from the obvious novelty factor (some might think programming via paper strips isn’t be the most efficient system, but it scores some mega-awesome points with us), overall it’s a well thought-out platform. Using CDs to construct the chassis, for example, was a creative piece of problem-solving and an effective decision. Even the finer elements, such as the feeder for the paper instructions, is a well-executed piece of engineering. Make sure you head on over to the project page and check out the handiwork!