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Well, we’ve taken a few days off to enjoy some turkey and presents, and we’ve come back to the office to keep chugging away… But it’s time for another break! New Year’s is within spitting distance, and we’ll be closed for New Years Day (that, of course, would be Friday, January 1st). As always, we’ll resume processing/shipping orders and replying to any correspondence the following Monday. We hope everyone has had a great year and that 2010 will be even better.

On a different note, we want to roll out some new artwork for the PumLantern. Instead of doing all the work ourselves, though, we want some input from you. What theme do you want to see on your lantern shells? Being the graphic designer dude, there are few things I need to keep in mind when designing new artwork:

So what would you like to see on your lantern? Cute critters? Aliens? Electronic circuitry equations? Flaming tacos? If you want to share your ideas, feel free to give me a shout: chris [at] solarbotics [dot] com . Over the next few weels we’ll be sure to follow up the designs that are being frequently requested. But only if they can meet the above design requirements. Feel free to even draw up some rough concepts and send them over – just remember that the simple designs are generally better. Take a look at the existing PumLantern designs or the shell source files if you need something to reference to.

ARDX w/ Free ArdweenyWell, we’re already half-way through December and the days, snow, and cold temperatures keep rolling on.  For those of you in need to get some last-minute  shopping in before the holidays hit, you’re in luck. For the next two weeks (until Dec 29th) we have two totally-awesome Arduino-type deals:

Wondering when you need to get those orders in? Well, if you want to receive your package before December 25th, you’ll have to check out the following dates:

UPS Ground to the United States – Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 16th
UPS Express to the United States – Order on or before Tuesday, Dec 22nd
Purolator Ground to Canada – Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 16th
Purolator Express to Canada – Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 23rd
Purolator Express to Europe & Australia – Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 16th

Note that with crazy weather conditions and a super-busy postal system, it’s probably a very good idea to put your order in sooner than later. We’re filling packages and getting them out the door as fast as we can, but once it gets into the hands of the delivery folks, there ain’t much else we can do!

Ardweeny breadboarded!Here’s the Ardweeny – the smallest breadboard-friendly Arduino-compatible kit! Sorry it took almost a month to get this ready. The GVS-Shield took priority, and it is the holiday season. Kinda crazy here.

The Ardweeny has proven to be quite handy in the shop where we’ve got several projects on the go. Plug in a ‘weeny to the breadboard, prototype up, and get’er done. For $10, it’s a fabulously handy Arduino-compatible!

Well folks, the BEAM Anniversary sale has officially come and gone. So many of you jumped on those awesome deals that we extended them an extra four days before taking them down. Anyways, we have tons of great stuff to get through, so let’s plow through starting with the new stock we’ve brought in over the past two weeks:Simple USB Host Shield for Arduino

And then we’ve gone ahead and broken down parts of the popular ARDX kit, so that you can get some of the items separately:

Solarbotics on FacebookIn other news, we’re stretching our tentacles out further into the world of the interwebs.  The past few weeks we’ve set up both a Flickr and Facebook account. We’re particularly interested about the former – Dave started off by adding some old BEAM pics we dusted off from the neglected corners of the server, Solarbotics on Flickrand we’re hoping to expand on that plus other content in the next little while. Stay tuned!

Lastly we want to welcome Roboteknia aboard as our newest distributor. Make sure to check them out if you’re looking at getting some neat robotics tech in Mexico!

We’ve been busy little elves at Solarbotics. New to our product listing is a fair number of parts and ICs that have been requested of us. Like what? Wellll…:

You always need new chips. Especially when somebody on the BEAM list has made something cool:

And you can’t have new chips without new chip carriers!:

And what fun is it if you can’t put your new ICs and carriers on a robot with a new motor?:

Ummm… That’s it. For now. We now return you back to your regular programming schedule.

A little while ago we received an email from an observant Mr. Pavel Ryabinkov, the site-admin of www.myROBOT.ru, who was asking us to relay a question to Mark Tilden:

Could you answer, can it be considered the official date of birth BEAM-robotics November 10, 1989?I was basing this question on the message Brian O. Bush:
“The first BEAM bot was “Solaroller 1.0″.  It was invented Nov 10, 1989 in Waterloo, Ontario at the University of Waterloo MFCF Hardware Lab (after hours) by Mark W. Tilden. It was made from two dead calculators, two dead Phillips cassette mechanisms, and several parts from Laser-printer cartridges”.
http://faq.solarbotics.net/oscillate.htmlI would also ask whether the celebrated 20th anniversary of BEAM-robotics, which will be held November 10, 2009. I would appreciate your attention to this matter.

blankTo which, Mr. Tilden replies: Hi Pavel.
Why, yes it will be the twentieth anniversary of BEAM next Tuesday, Nov 10, 09. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. So busy at the moment it would have completely slipped by. Here’s a little more background if you wish to post it somewhere.The first BEAM robot was Solarover 1.0, built after I attended an Oct 29, 1989 lecture by Rod Brooks at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Brooks laid out his then-fashionable “Subsumption architecture” design for robot control that, although simpler than conventional AI, was still strongly computationally based. I remember impertinently asking “if simpler works, then how low could one go?”. Dr. Brooks answered that he was certain more complexity was needed for machine competence than not. I had evidence otherwise, but didn’t press the point.Fortune favoring the ready mind, that lecture just catalyzed concepts, skills, and designs I’d considered for many years. Are there minimal, elegant, efficient, low cost solutions to autonomous robot control? How long would it take to proctor real-world autonomous robots from “single cell” organisms to human form competence using guided design? In the months that followed, the tenements of “Biomorphic design” (the science behind the educational BEAM outreach) came about in a flurry of bot building, IEEE lectures, Usenet posts, and late-night contemplations.

An innate coffee addiction also helped significantly, blessings be to the bean.A well oxidized datestamp.Solarover 1.0 came about as an experiment to see just how inexpensively one could build a light-powered. light seeking autonomous rover from junk parts, and “trick” it to do simple floor cleaning as a result of its Braitenberg-inspired wanderings.

The first of many, I went on to build dozens of similar robots based on the primitive Solarengine neurons that year, which led to the BEAM International Robot games, international lectures, the 1992 Santa Fe Artificial Life conference (lecturing alongside Brooks), publications, books, TV, kits, Solarbotics, Los Alamos National Laboratory research, NASA, and a broad line of WowWee robots which have sold around 20 million units to date (not forgetting the thousands of hand-built robots by colleagues, enthusiasts, and steampunks internationally).

Biomorphic on a PCB, color-coded for rapid prototypingThis Christmas will see the presentation of the fast and funny Joebot humanoid on toy shelves worldwide. Walks, talks, sees, listens, all for less than the cost of a single Asimo-class Superservo. The Joebot prototype was entirely BEAM controlled before the behaviors were sampled into processor waves for mass manufacture: the Biomorphic Nervous network comprising less than 80 transistors in a symmetric, self-organizing array of custom-made printed circuit boards.

Best of all I have answers my research questions from what seems a lifetime ago.

A handful of transistors (with the added support of good friends and colleagues) are all you need.

Yes Virginia, there are beautiful, elegant solutions to making things move.

Twenty years.

Some compulsion required.

Sincerely,

Mark W. Tilden
Robotics Physicist
Nov 5, 2009

Inexcusably, I was very involved in getting ready for the STAO.org teacher’s conference, and simply didn’t get everything ready in time. That was a mistake, as it is BEAM that made us (funny that, as we usually are the ones who make BEAM). Still, here we are, a humble 20 years later after Mark’s first design into building something simple, cool, and geeky.Let’s celebrate! We’ve brought out the popular Junkbots and solar cell bundles. Not only that, but they and other popular Solarbotics kits and parts bundles are 15%-35% off until the end of the month!

A tip of the hat to Mr. Tilden – thanks for sharing your technology with the rest of the world. It’s been a fun ride!

3D printed Line Follower Robot chassisOhhh, we like 3D printers. We’re working with the local Protospace to fund-raise for a Makerbot. I want to see one of these Line Follower chassis (especially as some of the parts look particularly familiar!).

LOVE open source hardware!

SparkFun and their nasty track of doomWe love SparkFun. Great group of people. Excellent products. It’s just that they’re… well… twisted and cruel.

You see their RoboJoust event? We didn’t take them serious when they said it was to be performed 4′ off a concrete floor. But here’s the proof. They’re actually building the table that high off the ground.

Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting a minimum construction material content of 60% lego blocks. And “flame-retardant construction materials”…

(Looks like fun. Wish we could come play too!)

We’re working on some new Arduino projects. It’s fun working on open-source hardware. Both these projects are out for manufacture now, so hopefully it will only be a few weeks until they are ready.

Solarbotics GVS ShieldProject One: The GVS Shield

We love Phidgets. They have all kinds of useful sensors, to which most subscribe to a handy pinout “Ground / Vcc / Signal”, which also describes most servo interfaces. It’s turning into the general standard for most dedicated interfaces. So, to make use of these with an Arduino, we’ve put together our own GVS Shield.

We could have made it with a simple 3-row x  18 block of male pins, but that wouldn’t fit the locking buckle-type connectors found on many Phidget and other accessory items. We’re using nicely space, proper shielded pin plugs. Here are some design highlights:

Arduino - very small!Project 2: The Ardweeny!

Yes, the name was a challenge. They didn’t think I’d have the guts to follow through with the name, but it’s just so suitable.

Our trial of the One-Chip ArduinoThis project is inspired by Kimio Kosaka’s One Chip Arduino project, where he jams all the parts for an Arduino on top of the IC, and just plugs the IC into the breadboard directly.

This is an Arduino PCB designed reverse to most others. Instead of mounting the IC to the board, we’re mounting the board to the IC (let me clarify…).

Put all the stuff on the top. Install looong leads through the rows on the outside edge. Jamb your ATMega328 in from the underside so the chip leads are pointing down, in the same direction os the long leads. Tack solder the chip leads to the long leads. Or not, if you think friction fit works.

Prototype ArdweenyDepending how you soldered the ATmega to the pins, you can either make it fit a 0.3″ space header (where it straddles the breadboard centerline perfectly) or 0.4″ wide (where it straddles the breadboard centerline, but uses up 1 extra empty hole next to the centerline).

Besides needing an FTDI cable, or SparkFun-like USB adapter/programmer, this will be a very inexpensive and compact way to do Arduino development. Stay tuned!

Bling out your transparent breadboard

Our clear breadboard was recently blogged on Makezine, which reminded me we juuuust about had an instructable ready for that same item. So, a few hours later, it is finished and posted.

Miniball Wannabe Instructable Project

And while I was at it, I finished editing another Instructable by Jerome Demers, our intern. He did up a DIY Miniball instructable that’s based on our retired Miniball kit.

Back to it – lots to catch up on that isn’t near as much fun as writing new Instructables!