2008 Archives

Posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 3:03 pm by Eric Bouwsema
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We had an unexpected delay in San Francisco - so we are not shipping any orders on Tuesday, May 7th.  But we are set for tomorrow so normal shipping will resume on Wednesday May 8th, our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 5:17 pm by Eric Bouwsema
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We are going to be at one of the two coolest shows on earth, the San Francisco Bay Area MAKER FAIRE! (The other coolest show is the Austin version!) So we are packing up shop and heading down to beautiful California where it’s warm and not snowing! If you are in the area, have a load of free air miles and/or a private jet be sure to come check it out, it’s guaranteed to be a blast! And be sure to check out our booth and say hi, maybe even buy a Herbie or three!

Considering this, the office will be on minimal staff for the next week, so please be considerate to those unfortunate few who have to stay behind, they are already upset that some of us will have a head start on our tans. But never fear, we are still shipping orders every day except for Friday May 2nd and Monday May 5th.

Posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm by Dave Hrynkiw
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Hand-made Solar Pendulum of Doom!I love MAKE magazine. I always enjoy reading (then trying) the projects in each magazine. I was a bit disappointed in their last issue where they didn’t cover the complete process to make gunpowder, but that’s a minor complaint.

I just noticed on their blog that they’re talking about our Solar Pendulum kit and Christopher Pepe’s version he built from our book “Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels”. Always nice to see other successful projects online!

Posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:18 am by Eric Bouwsema
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Dave's OfficeDave, el Presidente of Solarbotics and HVW Tech, may be difficult to get a hold of due to an inability to get into his office! So if you call and ask for Dave you’ll have to wait while we dig him out. And if you are waiting for Dave check out this very cool Star Wars Rube Goldberg machine featured on YouTube this morning! Happy April Fools!

El Presidente

Posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 11:49 am by Dave Hrynkiw
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First of all, let me apologized for the delay in getting any posts up lately.

For those who may not know, Solarbotics Ltd. purchased HVW Technologies just over a year ago. This past year has gone by very quickly, and I’ve had to put down the soldering iron, and sit in front of a keyboard just to wrap my brains around microcontroller-based designs. When one is used to hard-wiring robot brains, using software across four platforms is quite a leap (AVR/PIC/Basic Stamp/PICAxe)!

So wish us a happy 1st anniversary of taking over HVW Technologies - it’s been a fun, busy year getting up-to-snuff on all these new cool toys!

Back to the reason for the post. Dan Gates, our intrepid techgeek, forwarded me this amusing link of a robot built from our GMTPkg tread bundle, and a couple of GM10 gear motors. It’s not your generic “wander-around” robot. Trust me - watch the video just for a few seconds before you decide to wander off to some other part of the google-video universe…