Recent News

Well, we have some good news and some bad news. First, the good. We’ve been keeping incredibly busy working on bringing in some new products. The bad news… We’ve been incredibly busy. So busy on new products (and a few big projects), in fact, that we don’t really have anything ready to show you (yet). If the good news didn’t interest you at all, try this: pies exist and they are delicious. This always has been and always will be good news. You can’t debate the glory of fruit-filled pastries. And if the bad news didn’t interest you either, just know that, unfortunately, scientists have not yet found develop rocket shoes. Bummer.

But that’s all okay, because we still have three things to show you today. Starting off with Mark - a pal, conspirator, and compadre of Solarbotics and generally all-around okay dude - who has been conducting some experiments with the BrutusBot (which he helped develop). He’s mounted a camera to it that records footage, which when watched makes the BrutusBot seem like some kinda… Alien stalker thing, creeping through your house like it’s in a terrible sci-fi horror movie. Check out the action:

It certainly shows how flexible the platform is, to be able to accommodate this kind of an application. Mark also recorded another similar video, but one that takes place in Calgary’s Aerospace Museum with the Brutus creeping around underneath and near some of the aircraft.Well, that’s one YouTube video… Why not another? Back in October we showed off YouTube user pateycanada’s project Robbe. He based it on a the Sumovore, and developing his own shields/brainboards to get the features he wanted. He just released another video where he goes into detail on the setup and behaviour, complete with a lot footage of the cute lil’ guy in action:

And our last item for today… Remember when we said that there weren’t any new products to show off? Well, that was kinda mostly true. We certainly have a (single) new option to show off for a product. Yana, our fantastical graphic designer, has whipped up a slick new dragon theme for the PumLantern to celebrate Chinese New Year. It’s available in all our standard lantern colours, and looks particularly good in, well, any of them.

So that pretty much wraps things up for another week. You can expect another (hopefully moreso) positively riveting newspost from us after another seven rotations of the Earth…

Well, it’s been a riveting week. We did all sorts of exciting things, like definitely not riding a pallet jack down a flight of stairs and off a totally awesome jump. Nope, didn’t happen at all. And just like how our tech’s face didn’t connect with the ground after the jump he didn’t take, we thought it’d be a good idea to celebrate this not-event with some new connector-type-stuff. And a motor. Because everyone loves motors.

	Mabuchi RF500TB Mabuchi Motor - $4.95 A very efficient, powerful, slow pancake motor. Mabuchi makes some of the best volume-manufactured motors in the world. They’re usually a premium over “clone” motors, but for good reason.
	2.1mm DC Power Plug Short - $1.75 This is a standard DC-style female plug, that comes as the connector itself plus a screw-on plastic casing.
	Telecom & Ethernet 4P-4C Clear Male Plug - $0.31 USD / $0.33 CAD This is the standard connection type that’s used for hooking up those wired telephone handsets that you barely see around any more. It has four pins, gold connections, and a clear housing. Exciting stuff.
	3-Pin Jumper Wire - F/F, 35cm - $1.95 USD / $2.05 CAD Each cable is 35cm (about 13.75″) long, and features a 3-pin JST Re connector at each end. They’re fairly standard units, often used on 0.1″ breakaway headers.
	1-Pin Jumper Wire - F/F, 16cm, Bundle of 10 - $3.95 USD / $4.15 CAD These jumpers come in packs of 10, and measure 155mm (6.1″) with a female connector at each end. They’re really helpful for jumping all kinds of things, such as going from board to board or whatever else you have in mind.
	Sharp Sensor Cable (20cm) - $1.95 USD / $2.05 CAD It can be a bit of a pain to get in there and solder up connections for a Sharp sensor, so we’ve brought in these 3-pin, 20cm (7.87″) cables to make life easier. This makes for a convenient connection to standard 0.1″ 3-pin headers, such as those used for servos.

Look at all them connector things. The only challenge now is to find enough things for us to plug into other things. Just like how we definitely don’t need to plug in the watermelon launcher to remotely fire when someone hits the doorbell. Nope, that won’t freak out the delivery people at all…

We’re a Canadian Company, but the impact of the over-zealously worded American Legislation H.R.3261 “Stop Online Piracy Act” and S.968 “PROTECT IP” will affect foreign Internet sites.

Being a central backbone to the Internet, the USA has an uncomfortably large influence on the rest of the English-speaking web, and so it’s of our Canadian interest to add our voice to the protest. As a company that has shared our resources even before the advent of the Open-Hardware movement, being able to openly link and share without threat of unreasonable retribution will be chilling.

Especially citizens of the United States, please follow the  suggestions listed by the instigators of today’s voluntary Internet website blackout, Reddit. Educate yourself about SOPA with the always-informative TED Talks. Take Action.

Well, it certainly has been a busy week! Particularly for our pals over at SparkFun, who just wrapped up their third annual Free Day. This is quickly becoming a favourite spectator sport around the office, as every year we tune in to watch the available money evaporate and/or their website/servers die a horrible, horrible death. As in years past, we sent along a lil’ SB lovin’ for the hardworking SparkFun crew. This time around it was some complimentary ice cream to help cool down after a long day (some of us thought we should order a few sledgehammers instead, so the SF team could dispense some Solarbotics-style troubleshooting for whatever IT problems popped up). You can see SparkFun’s appreciation for our delicious treat written on the inside of a box in the photo to the left.

In other news, Jetty over at Thingiverse just released a super awesome project called the ArdJet Programmer. He’s made (in his words) “a cheap, easy to build ISP (In System Programmer) which you can use to write the bootloader to an Extruder or Arduino Mega or any other Arduino board with an ICSP connection.” Our favourite part, of course, is that uses an Ardweeny for some of the guts. Regardless, it’s a very nice build and he’s done an excellent job with the resources and instructions. He’s done a great job at keeping the size compact, using space very efficiently.



New Products

We won’t lie. This week’s collection of new products isn’t the most inspiring or exciting. But that’s okay, because we’ve included a button and a switch. And everyone loves buttons and switches.

	Infrared Sensor Jumper Wire - 3-Pin JST - $1.50 USD / $1.58 CAD Three pin JST connector with red, black, and yellow colored wire. 5 inches of wire length, perfect for interfacing SHARP analog Infrared sensors to your project.
	SPST - 6.2mm Momentary Tactile Pushbutton - $0.70 These 4-pin momentary-contact SPST (Single Pole, Single-throw) switches are great for sending reset signals.
	ARDX Arduino Mega Base Kit - $6.95 Usually when you see Mega and Bass in the same sentence it’s not usually about Open source microcontroller platforms, but in this case it is! Well that’s kind of a stretch cause we’re really talking about the Arduino Mega Base Kit which allows you to attach your rogue Arduino Mega (or compatible board) to a ARDX experimenter’s platform.
	ARDX Acrylic Base Kit - $6.95 Wrangle in your loose Arduino - you don’t want them going rogue, so tie it down to an ARDX experimenter’s platform!
	CR2032 3V Lithium Coincell Battery - $1.95 USD / $2.05 CAD This is a VERY common regulated 12 VDC 2000mA output power supply used for many common gadgets.
	CR2025/CR2032 Coincell Battery Holder - $0.49 USD / $0.52 CAD Here’s a coin cell holder for mounting the most common types of coin cell batteries: CR2032 and CR2025. You could try other batteries but we’re guessing you won’t have much luck with ‘AA’s.
	SPDT Momentary Toggle Switch - $3.25 CAD / $3.45 CAD Check this action out - It’s a panel mount toggle switch, Yay! This switch is unique in it’s operation as it has a spring inside that automatically returns the switch to the center-OFF position.
	5mm Water-Clear Phototransistor - $0.45 This 5mm Water-clear Phototransistor will pick up visible and infrared light and conduct current. When light reaches this high sensitive/fast response time component it’s much like current reaching the base of a transistor which allows current to flow from collector to emitter.

Yup. Look at all them mighty fine lookin’ button and switches. Both of ‘em. We’ll leave you to bask in their warmth and glow until next week.