News Archives

Solarbotics and HVW Tech will be closed Monday June 30th in lieu of Canada Day.We will be open again on Tuesday July 1st, and will be answering your calls, emails and general supplications - but will not be shipping as our couriers will not be picking up or delivering that day.

Solarbotics and HVW Tech will be open on Friday July 4th with limited staff in the morning as we make our annual trek to the world famous Calgary Stampede parade!

Actually, it’s been done, but not this nicely. Those guys at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have a nice report on their “microglider” project. They do some fine work!

Bah. That picture is too small! Let’s look at a BIG one!

Ooo! And they have more big pictures here! This one is nice - it shows the mechanics on the oher side. (Don’t you love the intarwebs?)

Well, we’ve been back for a few weeks now, and the demobots still have to be unpacked. It was a blast. From what we understand, attendance was up almost 50% over last year. Traffic was backed-up from the local highway to the fairgrounds.

There were LOTS of new exhibits. We should know - we’ve been to every Maker Faire so far!

Oh, and Solarbotics’ Cheryl was caught demonstrating “Herbie the Mousebot”…

Hi all.

It’s Monday, May 19th, and for some reason, we have something called “Victoria Day” today. We’re not open today, but I promise, we’ll be back in tomorrow, rested and relaxed and ready to process your orders!

Now to just beat these darn springtime allergies…sniiiiifffff….

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.

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.

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!

Dave, 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!

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…

Well, a tax break, who would’ve thought…. Though I did see a pig flying recently.

For all you Canadians, you can now order and pay only the 5% GST - even before January 1st!

Oh, and we won’t be open on the 31st as we’ll all be too busy preparing for our respective New Years bashes!

Happy New Year to all our customers, distributors and suppliers from the Solarbotic/HVWTech staff!