News Archives - September, 2005

For those who have used or are planning on using our Express (1-2 business day) shipping option to the United States:

In recent years, Purolator, the Canadian shipping company who handles the Express shipments, had all parcels destined for the United States delivered by Airborne Express. This past year, Airborne Express was purchased by DHL. DHL is currently in the middle of amalgamating several DHL and Airborne Express freight sorting hubs into one combined system.

While many Solarbotics orders are being process and delivered on time, unfortunatley we have been seeing some delays due to this action. We would like to assure all of our customers that we are working directly with the shipping company to ensure a timely delivery of all orders. Although not responsible for this delay, Solarbotics Ltd would like to apologize for all customers affected.

For anyone who has an order which has been delayed or is thinking of shipping using this method, please contact our office using the toll free line, 1-866-276-2687, to ask any questions.

Arrrrrrr….Tis the official “Talk Like a Pirate Day” this fine Septembarrrr the 19th. For all ye landlubberrrrs, thatÂ’s this Monday September the 19th. If ye be an unbeliever, check out the official site here.

In celebrrration of this fine tradition, we be offerrring a special deal. Everyone knows that every good Pirate needs a good Turrrbot on his shoulder. (Parrrots…Turrrbots…same thing) Soooo….

Anyone who calls the Solarrrbotics office and places an orrrder for a Turrrbot will be given 15% discount off the cost of the kit…with one small provision.

Ye must talk like a Pirate! You saavy? Allrighty then, a quick recap…call the office (toll free line 1-866-276-2687) and talk like a pirate and ye be the lucky winner of 15% off yerrr Turrbot kit.

Do ye dare?

The Atmel Brainboard is a very popular add-on to our Sumovore Sumo robot. But with newer releases of the WinAVR GCC programming suite, there is a difference in the way the source code is handled that will make it not compile and load properly.

Bob Cook has been nice enough to
tweak our source to make it more compatible, and compile-time error free! Thanks Bob!

Brian Fields is heading up a new BEAM botting competition which Solarbotics is proud to be in association with. To borrow from the website:

To enter this contest all you have to do is build the smallest robot you can in one of these three categories

Turbot, Walker, or Photovore. This contest is much like ChiuÂ’s contest way back when but, I just added two more categories. This contest is totally free and anyone can participate in it.

Soooo, get building!

Here’s a tip submitted by Rick Steenblik regarding hacking our SCC3733 for less voltage, but more current:

After using your SCC3733 solar cells for a couple of bots I noticed that they can be altered to provide about 3.3v at 80ma (in full sun) by cutting the bus connector on the back to electrically separate the two sides of the cell and then to cross-connect the two sides of the bus to the + and - contacts. This puts the two sides in parallel.

Nice - half the voltage; twice the current, still all in the same solar package!

It’s really nice to receive pics of projects people have built out of our book “Junkbots”. Here’s one of the latest: the Pendulum by Christopher Pepe. Nice magnetic suspension mechanism!

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