Maker Faire, Nunchucky, PumLantern

WOW! What a week! Most of us have returned from Maker Faire, where we had a fantastic time. We met a lot of great people, saw loads of neat projects and displays, and got a chance to take in some beautiful California weather.  We're absolutely exhausted after an insanely long and busy weekend, but we're slowly getting back into the groove. We've resumed processing and filling orders as well as answering emails and other inquiries.

Did you miss the chance to go to Maker Faire? Don't worry, we have a bunch of neat treats to cheer you up like...

The Nunchucky! This is a cool little breakout board for the Nintendo Wii's Nunchuck controller. It features:

• Two sets of interface pads
• Includes both 4 Pin male and 4 pin female headers
• Lock notches so your Nunchuck "clicks" in and won't let loose!
• Tie-down Holes for securing ribbon-cable extensions

Try putting it to work with your favourite flavour of Arduino - we'd love to see what you come up with!

And our other treat for all y'alls...

The PumLantern! That's right - this is a brand new Solarbotics kit. It's been in the works for the last few months, but we wanted to make sure we had it ready before releasing it into the wild. It's made as a replacement for our now dead and obsolete HexPummer. That popular kit has served us well for many years, but we decided it was time for a facelift and redesign. The new kit is very similar to the old - it's a solar powered light gadget that charges all day and blinks away four LEDs all night. And just like the HexPummer Lantern we had earlier in the year, the PumLantern also comes with a Japanese-style lantern to make it that much prettier. What's different between the old and the new? The new uses a more compact design and implements a few cost reducing changes. We've passed that directly on to you, so that the PumLantern's price knocks a few dollars off that of the HexPummer Lantern.

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What, isn't that enough? Oh, alright - we have something just for those of you who want, nay NEED some sort of Bay Area Maker Faire 2009 memorabilia. Only for the next few weeks we'll make available the same limited edition lantern theme set that we brought to the Maker Faire itself. You better nab it soon - these guys aren't going to be around for very long.

PS- We'd like to send a quick shout out to the fine folks at OnlineMetals.com in appreciation for lending us their wonderful pallet wrap during breakdown. Thanks a bunch Amber and gentlemen!