News Archives - December, 2009

Well, we’ve taken a few days off to enjoy some turkey and presents, and we’ve come back to the office to keep chugging away… But it’s time for another break! New Year’s is within spitting distance, and we’ll be closed for New Years Day (that, of course, would be Friday, January 1st). As always, we’ll resume processing/shipping orders and replying to any correspondence the following Monday. We hope everyone has had a great year and that 2010 will be even better.

On a different note, we want to roll out some new artwork for the PumLantern. Instead of doing all the work ourselves, though, we want some input from you. What theme do you want to see on your lantern shells? Being the graphic designer dude, there are few things I need to keep in mind when designing new artwork:

• Detail: As impressive as our laser engraver is, it can only cut so small before destroying very fine segments. Additionally, we want the artwork to be somewhat sturdy, so we can’t have a whole bunch of itsy-bitsy elements that might break off.
• Stencil: We’re cutting shapes out of a single piece of material - there isn’t any glue or wire to keep pieces in their spot. All elements need to be attached to the wall of the lantern, and you can’t have any free-floating islands/shapes-within-shapes.
• Subject matter: We like to release our PumLantern designs through a creative commons license, and we don’t like being sued. All our designs have to be original (or build on other public domain designs), and cannot infringe on any copyrighted materials.

So what would you like to see on your lantern? Cute critters? Aliens? Electronic circuitry equations? Flaming tacos? If you want to share your ideas, feel free to give me a shout: chris [at] solarbotics [dot] com . Over the next few weels we’ll be sure to follow up the designs that are being frequently requested. But only if they can meet the above design requirements. Feel free to even draw up some rough concepts and send them over - just remember that the simple designs are generally better. Take a look at the existing PumLantern designs or the shell source files if you need something to reference to.

Well, we’re already half-way through December and the days, snow, and cold temperatures keep rolling on.  For those of you in need to get some last-minute  shopping in before the holidays hit, you’re in luck. For the next two weeks (until Dec 29th) we have two totally-awesome Arduino-type deals:

• Shieldpack (This promotion has ended. Better luck next time!) - Get four arduino shields (two SB Protoshields, one each of the new SB-GVS Shield and Wingshield Screwshield) for $40 - Save a cool 20% over buying them individually!
• ARDX w/ Free Ardweeny (This promotion has ended. Better luck next time!) - Buy a Arduino Experimenter’s Kit and we’ll throw in the new Ardweeny for free! (UPDATE: Wow - these are turning out to be so popular that we’re running out of stock!  We’ll leave this one up for as long as we can, but once we’re sold out, that’s it!)

Wondering when you need to get those orders in? Well, if you want to receive your package before December 25th, you’ll have to check out the following dates:

UPS Ground to the United States - Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 16th
UPS Express to the United States - Order on or before Tuesday, Dec 22nd
Purolator Ground to Canada - Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 16th
Purolator Express to Canada - Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 23rd
Purolator Express to Europe & Australia - Order on or before Wednesday, Dec 16th

Note that with crazy weather conditions and a super-busy postal system, it’s probably a very good idea to put your order in sooner than later. We’re filling packages and getting them out the door as fast as we can, but once it gets into the hands of the delivery folks, there ain’t much else we can do!

Here’s the Ardweeny - the smallest breadboard-friendly Arduino-compatible kit! Sorry it took almost a month to get this ready. The GVS-Shield took priority, and it is the holiday season. Kinda crazy here.

The Ardweeny has proven to be quite handy in the shop where we’ve got several projects on the go. Plug in a ‘weeny to the breadboard, prototype up, and get’er done. For $10, it’s a fabulously handy Arduino-compatible!

Well folks, the BEAM Anniversary sale has officially come and gone. So many of you jumped on those awesome deals that we extended them an extra four days before taking them down. Anyways, we have tons of great stuff to get through, so let’s plow through starting with the new stock we’ve brought in over the past two weeks:

• Minimal USB Host Shield for Arduino
• Simple USB Host Shield for Arduino
• PICAXE-18M IC
• PICAXE-20×2 IC

And then we’ve gone ahead and broken down parts of the popular ARDX kit, so that you can get some of the items separately:

• ARDX Plastic Tool Case
• Half-Size Breadboard
• HXT900 Micro Servo
• 5 x AA Holder With 2.1mm Barrel Jack
• Oomlout ARDX Kit (No Arduino) - Already have an Arduino and cable? This kit will save you a few bucks off of the ARDX and set you up with all the other components.

In other news, we’re stretching our tentacles out further into the world of the interwebs.  The past few weeks we’ve set up both a Flickr and Facebook account. We’re particularly interested about the former - Dave started off by adding some old BEAM pics we dusted off from the neglected corners of the server, and we’re hoping to expand on that plus other content in the next little while. Stay tuned!

Lastly we want to welcome Roboteknia aboard as our newest distributor. Make sure to check them out if you’re looking at getting some neat robotics tech in Mexico!