The University of of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been running a BEAM-style mechatronics program (GE100) for the last few years. The purpose of the class is to build a self-powered device that can propel itself over both smooth and rough terrain, using a pair of servos and a BEAM-style servo-controller circuit (similar in function to […]
More about website development
Dave Hrynkiw
October 15, 2019
A decent website is a core of a web-centric store like ours. Back in the early days, I hand-coded HTML (yeah, go back to waybackmachine to admire that work), and what you got is what you got. Since then, we rebuilt Solarbotics.com through 3 more iterations of totally refactored hand-coded platforms, and then 2 aborted attempts as re-releases on Magento and then WordPress/Woocommerce. Those last two attempts cost us the ball-park of a really really nice Tesla with nothing much to show for it, with a devastating website hack in-between to kick us in the nether-regions. Many expensive and painful lessons were learned in this process.
Since then, we've released unsatisfactory consultants, brought the development management in-house, and piece-mealed specific development aspects to consultants with MUCH better results. It's come at the cost of letting our internal R&D coast for the better part of a year while we focus our top-talent on getting the website reworked, but its something that needed to be done.
We are about to re-release Solarbotics.com on a WordPress/Woocommerce platform, with some new features added, and some others removed. We'll be staging out further enhancements as we get comfortable with the platform, and hope you'll continue being good customers of Solarbotics.com.
MORE POSTS
Eastern Canadian Robot Games Results
Yes, the Eastern Canadian Robot Games have been over for about a month, but I still think the following is worth mentioning: The Solarbotics Sumovore won first place in beginner mini-sumo The Solarbotics ScoutWalker III won first and third in the Walker competition Our own Grant McKee won Advanced Minisumo with his own design "Ender's […]
Solarbotics at MAKE Faire - Proof!
See, I was actually there! Well, at least there's proof that I was. Here's an interview with Bashiba Grossman, showing off her 3D printed artwork. About 1/4 the way in, you'll see a suspicious man show up in the background. Nice hat, eh? Thanks to Floyd on the BEAM-List for pointing this out!
Friday New Product: All the Books!
After we have survived recent natural disasters like floods and thunderstorms, mosquitoes are another disaster that needs elimination. I don’t like mosquitoes. They are evil vampires lurking in the dark. Flies on the other hand are jovial and rich in protein. Cats usually specialize in them. But cats don’t tackle mosquitoes very well.. . I […]
Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!
Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.
Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.