Solarbotics (and HVW Tech) will be closed tomorrow (July 1st), and Friday (July 3rd). Standard rules apply - you can still place orders, send email, and leave phone messages while we’re closed. Shipping and correspondance will resume on Thursday and then again on Monday.

And what’s the reason for these crazy, crazy schedules? While Canada Day and the annual Cowboy Hick Fest make convenient excuses, the truth is that we’re taking this opportunity to do some major organizing and renovations around the office. We apologize for any immediate inconvenience, but these improvements will benefit everyone in the long run. Just you wait and see - once Monday rolls around, we’ll be a leaner, meaner Oscar Meyar Weiner robot sellin’ machine. In the mean time, we wish all our fellow Cunucks a Happy Canada Day and all our friendly neighbours to the south a fantastic July 4th.

We’ve got Freeduino version 2.2 back from the assembly line today, and all tests out beeeautifully! New features include an SMD-mounted 16MHz crystal, better power-consumption circuit routing (for battery-operated projects), and “hacking pads” for using the FTDI “Bit-Bang” method of burning bootloaders (instructions in the manual).

It’s 100% Arduino-compatible, made in Canada, and back in stock!

Over the course of the next summer months we’re aiming to roll out some additional features and content. While most of that is still in the works and I probably shouldn’t be talking about it too much, we have something small to show off. We often get requests from people asking about the best places to find websites devoted to BEAM, resources for DIY projects, or even interesting sites we stumble across in our voyages across the intertubes. And thus we present… Community Links! This new page can be found by clicking on the big ol’ “Resources” button at the top, and then “Community Links” link (…huh?) on the lower left-hand side.  It documents a handful of the neat web pages we frequently visit, as well as connections to our Twitter and YouTube accounts. We hope it’ll help you to discover something new and interesting.

But don’t fear, I wouldn’t leave you without showing some sort of product love and appreciation.  We’ve just marked down both the GM18 and GM19 gearmotors from $19.75 to $15.95. They’ll now save you $3.80, and are at the same price as all our other metal gearmotors too. That about wraps things up - have a great weekend!

Edit: Looks like we just got in a shipment of various PICAXE items. Most notably the Serial Download Cable is now available. Oh, and do you remember the PICAXE 28X1 and 40X1 ICs, and how they were discontinued and dead? Well, now they’re undead. Zombie microcontrollers, if you will. Don’t ask me how or why, but they’re back in stock and can be ordered any time.

We’ve been having such fun with the PumLantern shells, we thought we’d share the love. Download the zipfile with several file formats under “resources” for the K PL kit!

It’s released under the Creative-Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Canada license.

We use a laser to cut ours out, but there’s nothing saying a steady hand with an X-Acto blade wouldn’t do the same thing.

Let us know if you do anything with the design. We’d love to see what you come up with!

In other news, we just got in a big ol’ batch of new Solarbotics catalogues!  While it only features some of the massive amounts of content here on the website, it might be perfect for those of you who enjoy sitting back and flipping through the pages. If you’d like to check it out yourself, the easiest way would be to download the 1.8MB PDF version. (Edit: You may also want to take a look at the USD or CAD price lists) “But we want real, physical pages!!”, you bellow in my general direction. Well, we have you covered there too. Simply fill out and submit this catalogue request form, and we’ll send one in your direction at no charge.

On a closing note, we’ve just received an absolute TON of new goodies from both Sparkfun and Arduino. While some of it will be making it’s way over here shortly, go check out the latest news post at HVW Technologies to see everything we’ve brought in. Mr Dave has been working around the clock to get all that content done up and online, so show your appreciation by sending us him all sorts of cookies. He likes cookies.

Did you miss the chance to go to Maker Faire? Don’t worry, we have a bunch of neat treats to cheer you up like…

The Nunchucky! This is a cool little breakout board for the Nintendo Wii’s Nunchuck controller. It features:

• Two sets of interface pads
• Includes both 4 Pin male and 4 pin female headers
• Lock notches so your Nunchuck “clicks” in and won’t let loose!
• Tie-down Holes for securing ribbon-cable extensions

Try putting it to work with your favourite flavour of Arduino - we’d love to see what you come up with!

And our other treat for all y’alls…

The PumLantern! That’s right - this is a brand new Solarbotics kit. It’s been in the works for the last few months, but we wanted to make sure we had it ready before releasing it into the wild. It’s made as a replacement for our now dead and obsolete HexPummer. That popular kit has served us well for many years, but we decided it was time for a facelift and redesign. The new kit is very similar to the old - it’s a solar powered light gadget that charges all day and blinks away four LEDs all night. And just like the HexPummer Lantern we had earlier in the year, the PumLantern also comes with a Japanese-style lantern to make it that much prettier. What’s different between the old and the new? The new uses a more compact design and implements a few cost reducing changes. We’ve passed that directly on to you, so that the PumLantern’s price knocks a few dollars off that of the HexPummer Lantern.

…

What, isn’t that enough? Oh, alright - we have something just for those of you who want, nay NEED some sort of Bay Area Maker Faire 2009 memorabilia. Only for the next few weeks we’ll make available the same limited edition lantern theme set that we brought to the Maker Faire itself. You better nab it soon - these guys aren’t going to be around for very long.

PS- We’d like to send a quick shout out to the fine folks at OnlineMetals.com in appreciation for lending us their wonderful pallet wrap during breakdown. Thanks a bunch Amber and gentlemen!

What all this excitement in San Mateo means though is that the Solarbotics/HVW Tech office will be closed on Friday May 29th and Monday June 1st and we will be opening on Tuesday June 2nd at noon.  So this means any orders placed during that time will not be shipped until Tuesday June 2nd.   Our apologies for any inconveniance this may cause, but if you need something fast (and assuming we’ve brought it to the San Mateo County Fair Grounds) come see at the Maker Faire and we’d be more than glad to hook you up.

Actually, the real reason we’re coming to you on this dusty Wednesday afternoon is that we have a pretty nifty announcement. We’re now official distributors of Arduino! Wooooo! While our good ol’ sister site HVW Tech will be carrying most of the new toys, we’re going to make sure at least a few of the fun things make it over this way. Don’t believe us? Here you go, we just received a shipment of the new USB boards, the Arduino Duemilanove (or as I like to call it, the Arduino Da-hooey-hooey-hooey). It’s actually pronounced something along the lines of ‘Do-ay-mill-ah-noh-vah’. But don’t quote me on that. Anyways, onto the juicy details:

Microcontroller: ATmega168
Operating Voltage: 5V
Input Voltage (recommended): 7-12V
Input Voltage (limits): 6-20V
Digital I/O Pins: 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins: 6
DC Current per I/O Pin: 40 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 50 mA
Flash Memory: 16 KB (ATmega168) or 32 KB (ATmega328) of which 2 KB used by bootloader
SRAM: 1 KB (ATmega168) or 2 KB (ATmega328)
EEPROM: 512 bytes (ATmega168) or 1 KB (ATmega328)
Clock Speed: 16 MHz

“Chris! You MORON!“, you scream at your computer screen, “This stupendous device is rather useless without some way of connecting to it!”

And you would be absolutely right. That’s why we’ve just made available a trusty 6-foot USB A to B cable for all your USB A to B connection needs. See? We got you covered.

But what if you’re not going to be at Maker Faire? What if you just want more cool stuff instead? Don’t worry, we have you covered with a brand spankin’ new 2.55″ Propellor from GWS. Check out that stats on this bad boy:

• 63mm (2.5″) long
• 19mm (0.75″) pitch (how much it theoretically moves forward in a single full revolution)
• 1mm shaft hole diameter (easily drilled out to suit your motor)

It’s online and ready for purchase, you know the drill. And that about wraps it up - have a great weekend everyone!