The Useless Box is continuing to populate the world with useless... usefullness, and that means it's time for another update on the Make Something Useless Useful project. You might remember we started in 2012 by donating a percentage of past sales of Useless Boxes to Plan Canada. This year we are donating $6000 to assist […]
Everybody have a good 2010? Good...
Dave Hrynkiw
January 12, 2011
Let's start 2011 by promoting a worthwhile event sponsored by one of our suppliers, SparkFun. Tomorrow is their 2nd "Free Day". Last year's event pretty much crashed their servers (we sent flowers of condolence). This year, they're going about it a bit wiser, offering several ways to taking advantage of their $150,000 give-away.
We're big fans of SparkFun, so at the risk of making our January 13 quite slow, go over there and take part, especially since that there's opportunity for $30k to be raised for charity!
A Makerbot "Thing-o-Matic" 3D printermade it's way to Solarbotics just before the Holiday break. I took it home and turned it into a holiday project, and we've just about got all the bugs squished out. We have some ideas we're looking forward to turning from "bytes to bits", and will be posting them as soon as we can.
We've just received our first batch of new prototype PCBs of the year. What's on the slate? Let's see... We're enthusiastic about the Synapse RF module, with offers XBee functionality in a more powerful and easy-to-use manner, so we've built some adapter boards. There's also an surface-mount Ardweeny, and a test PCB for Jimmie P Rodgers' "LOL Shield" (Lots 'o LEDs).
Soldering new PCBs while listening to the 3D printer hum, while watching the SparkFun servers get attacked... This should be a fun week!
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Friday New Product - MicroSD Adapter, Po...
Welcome to the first Friday of 2013. This is better than the first Tuesday, because as you may have guessed, after the first Friday comes the first Saturday! And that leaves me endlessly satisfied that everything is as it should be, and the new calendar doesn't need "convincing" for what order the days should go […]
SCC3733 Solarcell hacking
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 […]
Arduino Book...and the Pendulum Swing!
Here's a great booklet to accompany any new Freeduino purchase - "Getting Started with Arduino", written by Massimo Banzi (the co-founder of the Arduino Project). This title is based on his free-download introduction PDF, but takes is much farther, guiding new electronics enthusiasts into how to use the Arduino / Freeduino in a project. Also […]
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