Although according to some sources Canadians in general (and Solarbotics in particular) have long since gone into hibernation, some autonomous robots (or Russians) are still purchasing new product and producing content, through some coincidence of stray electric impulses. Among the wandering flickering lights of deserted offices, with Canadians gently tucked away in the corners and wrapped in cozy blankets under their desks until the next year, only roombas gently buzz away on their cleaning duties while lonely Russians on duty poke random keys on the keyboard to bring you the last new product of 2012.

But before that, just a quick reminder that Solarbotics will be closed on January 1st. Even Russians need to get in their yearly dose of sleep.

	SparkFun Cerberus USB Cable – 6ft $5.95 The Cerberus, it sounds really smart, and it really is! It provides a great solution for the age old problem of never having the right USB cable. This is a 3 in 1 USB cable that has a Mini-B, Micro-B and Standard-B on one side to a single USB-A male connector on the other.
	SparkFun Hydra Power Cable – 6ft $4.95 Behold, the Hydra! It doesn’t have seven heads as you might expect, nor is it even a dragon, but it is a great way to get 5V to your project via 3 separate power connections broken out from a USB-A male connector.
	Electric Imp Breakout $12.95 If you aren’t familiar with the Electric Imp, it essentially provides an easy, integrated way to connect almost any hardware device both to other WiFi enabled devices and to internet services.
	Electric Imp Shield $19.95 So you have an Electric Imp (or plan on buying one), what’s next? Well you’re going to need a breakout for it, here’s where the Electric Imp Shield comes in. This shield gives you to the interface to adapt an Arduino-compatible board to a WiFi enabled Cortex-M3 core development module.
	Beginning Arduino by Michael McRoberts $29.99 Work your way through an amazing set of 50 cool Arduino projects with Beginning Arduino! Absolutely no experience in programming or electronics required. This book will guide you from start to finish with Arduino programming and electronics knowledge & skills.

Also, with all the hibernation shticks happening all over the place, we are forgetting to wish you a Happy New Year and Happy Apocalypse, using the “happy” descriptor mainly because it never happened, unless we are missing something, being so deep in our winter slumber.

Well, it’s that time of the year where the snow falls and us Canadians need to hibernate. As a result, Solarbotics will be closed December 24th, 25th, 26th and January 1st. Apparently our sleep schedule is kinda wonky. As usual, feel free to submit orders and emails, and we’ll get caught up on a first-come first-serve basis once we’re done our annual snooze and operations are back to normal.

	Solarbotics Christmas Tree We wrapped the office tree in a string of RGB LEDs, stuffed it full of mini lanterns and Star Wars snowflakes, and then put a Star Controller on top. Not bad, eh?
	Christmas Tree O’Digital Logic This simple little electro-tree was made with 64 LEDs arranged into a 3d sculpture while not using any microcontrollers.
	Sound Reactive Christmas Tree A cherry tree in downtown Victoria, BC has been rigged with the usual lights… But they can detect and react to sounds made around them, changing colour and intensity depending on how high or low voices are singing.
	Geeky Christmas Ornaments Ah, the time-honoured tradition of decorating your Christmas tree using nothing but old and discarded computer guts. Instructables user Hack42Moem made a fine tutorial to explain the art.
	Ceramic Dish Christmas Tree in Belgium Residents of Hasselt, Belgium donated more than 5000 pieces of unused ceramic dishware, that were all assembled to make a very giant and very stunning Christmas tree.

And that’s about it from us for now. We have our snacks, warm blankets, and are all settled in for our Canadian hibernation. Because we’ll probably be cozy and unconscious, we’d like to wish all of you the most excellent holiday break possible. We’ll see you in the New Year!

Stupid calendar! I almost wanted to congratulate everyone on surviving Friday the 13th… But the dumb calendar did not cooperate. So I have no choice but to complain. Maybe even submit a report to the calendar. Those stubborn days and their numbers, they will answer for such a misbehavior.

	Arduino Due $58.95 The long awaited ARM board by Arduino is finally here, now you can access higher level functionality while still using the wildly popular Arduino IDE.
	Motor Mind BE 3A Serial Motor Controller $29.99 Here is a motor controller that only needs 2 lines for control, it communicates serially via 2400 or 9600 Baud TTL signals. It’s a smart controller that has a number of parameters that can be adjusted and can return valuable data such as speed & position.
	Arduino Due Faceplate $3.00 The Solarbotics Arduino Freeduino Enclosure (SAFE) is a laser-cut acrylic case for your projects – now we created a line of faceplates to custom-fit a variety of development boards + shields.

In other news, we updated the SB-Firefly code. It now saves your mode setting, so when you remove power from the Firefly, you will start in the same mode once power is re-applied. We also have a new Sixth mode called Rainbow which is designed to smoothly color cycle an RGB LED, such as what we have included with the Northern Lights Bundle… hint… hint. The code is available for download – look for SB-FireFly Code V2 in the SB-FireFly’s Documentation tab.

In regards to those pesky calendar issues… I might forgive the number 8, for personal reasons. Others numbers from 1 to 31 are going under house arrest. Until someone bribes me. With cake.

Today we proudly present not ONE, but two products! Mind-blowing stuff… So impressive… Well, if someone didn’t beat me to the The Northern Lights Bundle yesterday, we would’ve had three…

	Solid State Relay SSR-10DD 10A/5-60VDC 3-32VDC $10.00 Traditional relays actually have physical little contacts that when powered by a little signal, bang together to pass much larger currents. They have little resistance, are generally reliable, but they are noisy and they don’t last as long as solid-state components. That’s where the **Solid State Relay** (SSR) comes into play.
	Electric Imp Development Card $29.95 It looks like and SD card…. it smells like an SD card…. but it certainly tastes much, MUCH better! Connect your project via wifi to the internet with the powerful, configurable, programmable Electric Imp.

And if the trend continues, next time we might even have four products! Scandalous… Numbers are so tricky. I think I’ll go count my fingers now (and maybe even toes if I’m really adventurous). But I’m afraid that will be too much, I might not be able to sleep tonight. Life can be overwhelming sometimes. Keep everything under control, especially your toes, and see you next week!

Ok, more like The Northern light. There’s only one, but it creates lots of light!

We made the SB-Firefly as a ATtiny85-based blinky light / “chewing-gum & duct-tape problem solver”, that is also Digispark compatible.

We made the Star Controller 3-watt RGB LED kit as an easy way to tame bright and power-hungry LEDs.

We put them together with a 3-day power supply and diffusing container, add a 10% savings, and TaDAAAH: The Northern Lights Bundle! And it’s well documented too!

What do you get in the bundle?

60140 SB-Firefly kit
60160 Star Controller RGB 3-watt LED kit
52242 2.1mm barrel jack/plug pair
17020 3AA battery holder
0.1µF Capacitor
8025 diffusion container
Double-sided tape
5-conductor wire

Start with our instructions to build a mobile blinky-dome of doom (mount it on your bicycle helmet – everybody will see you coming), or modify it. The SB-Firefly is programmable with the Arduino programming enviroment (with a suitable in-circuit programmer), so you can use the remaining 2 available I/O pins to blend it into your project!

So, there we were: Sitting at our desks, at our computers. And before we knew it, BAM! INTERNET! And when you’re unexpectedly faced with this kind of a freak-circumstance, there’s only one thing you can do: find something worth sharing. So here we go, our latest round of absolutely life-shattering links. You’ll never be the same. We know we won’t be.

	Hungry Birds on Twitter Birds have the right to tweet! While eating. By Attaching bacon fat squares to a keyboard, birds can create tweets on the @hungry_birds Twitter account.
	Pinokio Pixar’s Luxo-Lamp as a hardware media project by Adam Ben-Dror. Love it, but the servo gears definitely need some sound-deadening grease.
	Robot Caterpillar Tank Treads, Johnny Five Style – 3D Print A complete instructable for 3d printing a a toy version of the robot from Short Circuit, Johnny Five, including DWG and STL format files for the base and treads.
	The Present: An Annual Clock that Tells Time in Seasons Yet another Kickstarter project that made it successful and is now available to the public – a clock that marks not minutes and hours, but the change of seasons with its one hand. We think it’s probably pretty tough to forget what the season currently is, but… This is still pretty neat.
	Simplifying Fabrication of Soft Robots Peristaltic pumps pushing air or liquid using the bulb of a blood pressure cuff… We’re not sure what all that means, but it certainly doesn’t sound like a robot? Yet it is how the soft robot might work, made even easier by using 3D printed molds, explained in more detail here.

You wouldn’t believe it. Even this morning I was on the way into the office, sitting on the bus. I took out my phone and before I knew it, BAM! INTERNET! All up in my face. You never see it coming…

Here we go, it’s the W day again. Seems like the previous one was two infinities ago. During that infinite time we had plenty of opportunities to pick the interesting stuff floating around internets, and bring it to you:

	Headphone Light Show EL (electroluminescent) wire is a cool thing. Add it to the headphones and make it pulse with music and that’s triple-cool.
	Internet radio occupies an 80-year-old radio case An internet radio is housed in an old case by “His Master’s Voice”, and stuffed with a 10″ laptop and Arduino that makes for a hack that is aesthetically pleasing, useful and clever. More details about the project from Florian Amrhein, the maker.
	Fast Track This piece is a part of land-art festival conducted in Nikola-Lenivets, Russia, which is in the middle of nowhere for most of non-Russian population, and translates something like “Nick the Lazy”. The installation piece itself is a road about the length of a city block, which is at the same time a trampoline. Now I understand whyfor the Lazy!!
	Solar “Death Ray”: Power of 5000 suns! A fiberglass satellite dish covered in 5800 mirror tiles focuses and amplifies the power of sun to ignite pretty much any organic material and melt metals.
	Circuit Board Skeletons Yet another set of artworks utilizing PCBs and electronic components. “The circuit board sculptures were a logical outgrowth of the more two-dimensional landscapes, using nature as a model and creating delicate objects out of these obsolete, but formerly cutting-edge technologies.” (from the artist’s website)

Aaaand that concludes the fine selection of links for today. See you in couple infinities!

If I could choose a super power, I would pick the ability to erase people’s memory. And lucky for me, I’ve just been granted a free wish from The Magic Taco. Get ready, everyone. Pew! Done! Whew, now we never have to write a new post again. Check out these “new” links we prepared for you today:

	Fans wear cosplay, superhero and manga costumes at London Comic Con 2012 Although the time of dressing up is almost a month away, these look darn cool. Save the ideas for next year!
	Vanishing Spirits: The Beautiful Dried Remains of Single-Malt Scotch by Ernie Button These are not the planetary hallucinations you will get after consuming large amounts of single-malt scotch. Instead, this is what the bottom of the glass would look like after said scotch is consumed. That is, assuming you are a talented photographer named Ernie Button who produced these macro images. If not, just enjoy the photos.
	Mine Kafon \| Callum Cooper One of Mark Tilden’s original ideas for “survivable robots” was for this built for the purpose of detonating landmines. This solution, albeit only wind-driven, is pretty clever and inexpensive.
	Iris Camera Concept Shoots Just What You See This is a prototype of a camera that uses biometric iris tracking to control the frame and capture photographs. Just double blink to snap a photo! Then, insert a USB stick into your nostril to transfer files, press bellybutton to activate WiFi… Hm, that might be a bit much…
	Skittles sorting machine sorts Skittles, keeps the band happy Never put your teeth on a brown Skittle again! If you’re like Van Halen, we have a solution for you that uses a TAOS RGB color sensor to sort this rainbow jumble into neat piles, for no particular reason at all.

If I could choose a super power, I would pick the ability to erase people’s memory… Wait, was that a mirror in front of me? Woops.

We’ve been having lots of fun with Openbeam, building all kinds of handy contraptions out of it. Today’s issue of Hey Look It’s New Stuff covers a big chunk of our stock.

	OpenBeam Extrusion – 1000mm Length $175.00 If you find it annoying to cut the 1m open beam extrusions down to size – you can now rejoice! Open beam precut lengths are here! Offered in a conveniently packaged kit, these precut pieces are ideal for designing all kinds of interesting structures. It is available in both black and silver.
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 30mm $1.00
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 45mm $1.00
	OpenBeam Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 60mm $1.25
	OpenBeam Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 90mm $1.50
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 120mm $1.80
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 150mm $2.10
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 210mm $2.75
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 270mm $3.30
	OpenBeam Precut Extrusion, Clear Anodized, 300mm $3.65
	OpenBeam Extrusion – 1000mm Length $10.00
	9V Snap to 2.1mm Barrel jack Cable $2.95 Well, this one is not OpenBeam, but we were too excited to have them in finally to leave them ’til the next week. Need a battery for your Arduino that is high enough to regulate the voltage to down to a solid 5V? Well here comes the 9V Snap to 2.1mm Barrel Jack Cable to your rescue! It allows you to plug in 9V and 7.2V rechargeable batteries to anything with a 2.1mm Barrel receptacle on it.

And what would you make out of all these neat little pieces, you will ask? Our latest is the robot chassis that we showed off a couple days ago. This particular revision shows our attempt at mounting laser-cut wheel-legs (“Whegs”?) and having it scramble across a particularly nasty Lego landscape. If you wanna sneak a peek at yet another iteration of the chassis we are working on, visit our Flickr photostream.

In other news, we use lots of ribbon cable and often need it in precision cuts of 8″-lengths. Using OpenBeam parts, an Arduino with CMDR shield, and a stepper motor we created this super handy machine you can see below. You can find a bit of project details in the video description.

We were also getting really tired of endlessly counting screws. So we got an automatic screwdriver feeder, and bent it into our will by hacking it with Arduino that controls the current and reads the sensor input. We also built a rotating carousel for catching the parts using some handy Openbeam components.

And that’s it for the OpenBeam issue today. Huge kudos go out to Terence Tam for kickstarting this cool construction material!

PS- Just a quick reminder that you can order your custom Useless Box top. More details in one of the previous posts.

Continuing in the tradition of mixing up the previously purely on-topic posts, we have a few things to announce today, other than bringing you still-brand-new-cool product. First off, the announcement from our Chief Geek:

Make Something Useless Useful

At Solarbotics, we put in substantial effort in creating kits for people to use to fulfill a purpose. But making a kit for something that by its definition is useless made us pause and ponder this irony. We generally don’t philosophize during working hours, but something about this disturbed us, and we want to fix it.

To this end, we are now officially making the Useless Box, USEFUL. As of today, Solarbotics is donating a percentage of past sales of Useless Boxes to Charity in the form of a $1100 donation to Plan Canada, where we’re assisting education in Africa in the form of paying for:

Building a well for a class

A School vegetable garden

Two sets of Classroom essentials

Building and stocking a school kitchen

Going forward from here until December 31st, we’re also taking 50 cents from the sale of each Useless Box and saving it up for a second contribution.

To further make our “Make something Useless, Useful” campaign appealing, we are also including a free PCB (a $2 value) in all Useless Machine kits sold at Solarbotics. This PCB makes the wiring up of a Useless Box trivial and error-free (assuming your soldering isn’t …useless).

So if you were thinking of doing something useless for somebody this holiday season, join us in making it a bit useful for somebody else.

Dave Hrynkiw
President, Solarbotics Ltd.

And now to this week’s collection of new stuff!

	Mega Solarbotics Arduino Freeduino Enclosure (SAFE) $14.50 The Solarbotics Arduino Freeduino Enclosure (SAFE) is a laser-cut acrylic case for your Arduino Mega. It also has the added feature that it can house an Arduino or Freeduino instead with a MEGA amount of space left inside.
	Wide VESA Mount (200x100mm) $9.95 By popular demand, we offer you the wide VESA mount for our SAFE line of enclosures! It allows you to install your application to the back of a High-Def LCD monitor or plasma TV, and tuck all the cables away with it for a clean project install.
	OPB704 IR Reflective Object Sensor $2.95 The OPB704 IR Reflective Object Sensor is a focused reflect sensor that is used for the detection of changes in a surface. It will save you from ever falling off a cliff! Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. It will save your robot from ever falling down the stairs! That’s better.

Seems like the Useless Box is the star of the show today, because now we are also offering…

Custom Useless Box Tops!

Useless Boxes are a hit. Christmas is coming up. Put these two together, and we got a new service for you – custom laser engraving of Useless Box tops. Get yours customized with a picture of your family, team, group favourite html tag, hex code, or cat! This option is available if you order a set of four Useless Boxes – we’ll put the same design on all 4 boxes.

To order your custom artwork, select Custom Top x 4 option in the product dropdown, add it to the cart and place the order. Send your order confirmation along with your greyscale artwork and instructions to [email protected], and we will take care of it from there. Make sure you follow the Custom Engraving Guidelines and check out the the Useless Box Template for a hand laying out your design.

You can see some some of our acrylic engraving tests and examples on our Flickr photostream.

Vector engraving example

Raster engraving example

Typically, and black and white vector design (AI, SVG, EPS, etc) looks the best when engraved, with its sharp edges and high contrast. Bitmap/raster images (image files like a JPG or GIF) are bit trickier to work with, but they look pretty good too. A good candidate image for laser etching will have good contrast, detail and clarity. Also, make sure you convert your file to greyscale – if the image/photo doesn’t look good in greyscale, most likely it won’t etch so well either. So pick your art carefully, and we will do our best to make it look good.

Aaaand that was everything for the exciting news for tonight. I was also going to add 15 entries of non-exciting news that include me brushing my teeth, apple pie for lunch, some coffee grinds research and a comparative table of impact of the Solarbotics floor covering hues on our office dog behaviour. But I will refrain.