Marble Catapult, New Product

Check. This. Out.

Don from Ontario sent this video our way, of a marble catapult machine he made that uses the GM18 30:1 Mini Metal Gearmotor. He goes into great detail on the mechanics and engineering, and the action starts around the 3:37 mark. We can't believe how intricate the design is, and can't even fathom the insane amount of tuning needed to get this working just right. The video pretty much shows off everything there is to say, but we're absolutely blown away. Further proof that we have some pretty awesome customers. If anyone else is working on a project they'd like to let us know about, give us a shout - we'd love to see it.

In other news, are you reading this newspost? We're going to guess 'yes'. Now the tricky part, are you reading this from Vancouver or the BC lower mainland? If the answer to that is yes... GO TO THE MINI MAKER FAIRE ALREADY! Some of us may still be in Calgary holding down the fort, but most of the staff are at the Faire as we speak, running a FREE ARDX workshop. Drop in, say hello, learn some Arduino... There'll be tonnes of other neat stuff going on all weekend too, so you don't got no excuse.

Now, the thing about being a busy company is that things get... Busy. Some people get busy buyin' new stuff, which keeps us on our toes. The problem is when the yokels like me who write these news posts get busy themselves with other stuff, and don't do their newspostin'. As a result... We've brought in oodles of new products and items over the last several months, and none of them have made it to the front page. Just so that we don't overload your brain with sheer amounts of awesome, we'll be breaking down the list into smaller chunks over the next couple weeks.  It'll go a lil' somethin' like this:

 

• SparkFun
  • Heaterizer XL-3000 Heat Gun - Shoot heatwaves by using pure MAGIC (aka electricity)
  • DSO Nano v2 - The newest version, equipped with a 320x240 color display, microSD card capability, USB connection, and rechargeable LiPo battery
  • Rover 5 Robot Platform - Uses 4 independent motors, each with an optical quadrature encoder and gearbox.
  • LCD Smartie Kit 20X4 White on Blue - This module can display all kinds of stats, data, text, and characters directly from your PC and the Internet.
  • DeadOn RTC DS3234 Breakout - A low-cost, extremely accurate SPI bus real-time clock with an integrated temperature-compensated crystal oscillator and crystal.
  • Medium Servo - A simple, low-cost, high quality servo for all your mechatronic needs.
  • Robotic Claw - Great for all your gripping needs. They are made from metal and are pretty heavy-duty.
  • Serial Embedded LCD Backpack - A serial enabled LCD backpack that allows you to control a parallel based LCD over a single-wire serial interface.
  • Power Driver Shield Kit - This shield allows you to use a computer power supply (or other power source) to use your Arduino to switch high current.

One last tidbit: We apologize to all of our customers who have been affected by the current postal strike. Hopefully it will be drawing to an end soon, and all of the back orders and shipments stuck in transit can get moving. The problem is completely out of control, but we know how much it sucks when the stuff you want/need isn't going anywhere. Although we hope that the Canada Post workers will find a swift resolution with their employers, this is just a reminder that shipping via Purolator/UPS is the best way to go until the strike ends.That's it everyone, have a good weekend!