2006 Archives

The Solarbotics Team will be taking Monday, January 1st 2007 off. We will be back bright and early Tuesday morning, and will ship any orders placed over the weekend then.

We wish our customers, distributors and suppliers all the best in 2007!

My weekly web-crawler popped up with this interesting link not long ago. Nicely put together, nice photos, nice group of ‘bots!

Simon Fraser’s Robots

Here’s a link from Gareth Branwyn at Streettech for his review of our new Herbie the Mousebot Kit!

What’s so special about the new SCC3733a-MSE? Two things:

• It’s machine-assembled with new high-quality Russian solar cells (the best commercial cells we’ve tested yet)
• It comes with a Miller Solarengine circuit pre-etched on the rear of the solarcell!

We have only a limited number of these cells presently, so if you’re looking for the absolutely highest power, or need a very compact solarengine, get’em while we still have them!

Another year has snuck by, and here we are on the cusp of another winter holiday season!

If you want to give a Solarbotics Kit (and we hope you do…) to somebody special this year, you should be aware of our shipping deadlines. It’s not recommended to use ground shipping now (which can take up to 3 weeks), so unless if you celebrate Ukrainian Christmas (January 7th), go with these guidelines:

• For US orders, your option is Purolator/DHL Courier (2 business days, so Wednesday the 20st by 2:00pm MST at the latest!).
   
• Domestic (Canadian) orders get an extra day or so leeway. For Western Canada your options are Xpresspost (2-3 business days - Dec.19) and Purolator (1-2 business days - Dec.20 before 2:00pm MST).
   
• Eastern Canada should use Purolator (1-2 business days - Dec.20 before 2:00pm MST).
   
• Atlantic Canada can use Purolator (1-2 business days - Dec.20 before 2:00pm MST). International orders even have less time, so check your list and get your shopping done! 

Thanks to Gareth Branwyn and his 2006 Holiday Gift Guide on Street Tech our new “Herbie the Mousebot” is featured on BoingBoing. For those who don’t know BoingBoing is “A Directory of Wonderful Things.”

After another marathon documentation-writing session, we’re proud to announce that both “Herbie the Mousebot” and the “Photopopper 5.0″ are in full production! Just in time for Christmas!

Yes, we’re approaching the time of the year when it’s the darkest and all you want to do is sip tea and huddle around the … soldering iron!

The first of our specials is the “KHSB1 - Learn Robotics Book Special”. It includes a copy of our popular “Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels”, plus your choice of a:

• K SS SolarSpeeder Kit
• K HP HexPummer Kit
• K PN Pendulum Kit

for $41.95USD / $50.95CAD

The next special we have is our HKSB2 - Goldbot package, consisting of our new improved versions of the K SS SolarSpeeder and K PP Photopopper! These are now made with a gold and black design using improved Millerengine technology, which makes them both about twice as fast as before!

Lastly, we’re pleased to be finally offering the K HM - Herbie the Mousebot kit. It’s been through several stages of development and refinement, but it’s now ready for pre-ordering (that means they’ll be ready to ship November 24th). They’re available in 4 colors, so we’re offering volume pricing discounts so you can have a full set of these dynamic, quick, easy-to-build robot kits.

We had some requests for some really, really small Pogo Push Pin Probes (Hmmm…shoulda named them PPPPs…). Anyway, here’s the PP8s and the PPH2, which are the “short” version of the PP8 and the necessary holder to mount them.

If you have really tight spaces you need to test, these are the probes you’ll need!

My marketing team has been throwing (ouch!) erasers at me (ouch!)until I get this put online:

Not sure if you should build or read this winter season? Combine the two! Get the “Junkbots” book and a HexPummer, Pendulum, or SolarSpeeder kit at a combined price that saves you money! (See below in “Featured Items”)