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 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!

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…

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!

The staff at Solarbotics/HVW Technologies has been worked hard these last six weeks leading up to the winter holiday, so we’ll be open again December 27/28, and again for regular hours January 2nd.

Hope the holidays are good to you too!

Regards,
Dave Hrynkiw
President, HVW Technologies/Solarbotics Ltd.

The MAKEr Faire wasn’t quite as packed as the ones in San Mateo, but it was just as interesting. We stuck around the Maker store, showing off Herbies to a great many people, and got to see many interesting exhibits. Hm. Almost time for a Flikr stream or similar of our own.

The holidays are fast approaching, and we’ve been swamped with “what should I get for my son/dad/mother/daughter” questions. HENCE, the “Geekware” category on the right side of the “products” page! Check it out for some ideas.

Also - if you want to receive those gifts by Christmas you need to order by the following dates:

Canada & United States (Major Metropolitan Areas):

• Expedited Courier - Friday, December 14th.
• Priority Courier - Thursday, December 20th. (For those of you with the Luck o’ de Irish, you might get away with Friday, December 21st!)

Please Note: This is to metropolitan areas, if you live outside of a major metropolitan area you may still receive your package, but we can’t promise it.  And if you live inside of a metropolitan area you still may not be guaranteed to receive it either as the Grinch sometimes works to slow down our couriers.  We try our best, but again no promises.

More soon, I promise!

We won’t have a full booth like we have in past faires, but that’s because Austin is sooo far away, and it’s not easy to bring all our gear down that far. So we’ll be down there assisting in the Maker Store. Feel free to stop by and say hi! We’ll be near the “Mousey the Junkbots” display.

What’s the Maker Faire you say? Check out this segment from KQED - it’s among the best I’ve seen:

Have a good Columbus Day down there!