Circuit: Herbie by Randy Sargent

Last summer during a Solarbotics Robotics for Educators session, one of the teachers noted something about many of the mainstream robotics and electronics learning platforms commonly used in classrooms. He said that those platforms suffered from the Black Box Effect. This effect was where the “black boxes,” the controllers, were plugged into the computer and […]

This mini-sumo design by Jeremy Bloyd-Peshkin features our wheels, and one of our favourite building materials, Sintra. We can't laser-cut sintra (PVC=bad stuff when burned), but milling it works well, as this builder shows. The asymmetric motor layout works, as proven by this contest-winning design (scroll to the bottom of the page).

About a million years ago (and by that, we mean 3-4) we had a crazy French intern called Jerome. He had a squiggly beard and liked to exclaim "SUPER COOL!" whenever he saw anything that caught his attention. But because he came up with neat stuff like the BeetleBot, we let him stick around. Even […]

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. […]