Holiday Closure

...and it was fun! Solarbotics was busy, showing off our new kits and gear motors, and shaking hands with a large number of our customers. Yeah, there weren't any "official" BEAM events, but we still had a good time running our Solarbotics-sponsored SolarSpeeder race, with the winner being 8(?) year old Devon Bateman (taking home […]

It's a short week this week, so new product is coming early. We are closed Friday April 18th, which is hence called Good Friday. LilyPad Arduino SimpleSnap with LiPoly cell $29.95 This is the LilyPad Arduino SimpleSnap Board. It's controlled by an ATmega328 with the Arduino bootloader. It has fewer pins than the LilyPad Arduino […]

Although not a true BEAM robot, this simple schematic by Randy Sargent is small, simple, slick, and effective. My own version uses a pair of pager motors and three cells from a 9V rechargeable battery. Hard to get any simpler than this device!

Well, the last batch of Escap gearmotors went very fast. Let's hope this batch lasts a bit longer! Unlike the last set, this set has a higher reduction ratio of 663:1 instead of 362:1. This means it starts turning 0.46V (!) drawing only 3.3mA (!!) It's a 3V rated motor, but our tests show that […]