Never mind that 10 block line-up at your local home electronics store. Solarbotics is where it's at this holiday season for great quality, inexpensive robots and parts. Feast your eyes on the packages of motors, wheels, kits and supplies which are all over 20% off the regular two-for pricing!! Do you want motors and LOTS […]
Solarbotics at Calgary Comic Expo 2013
Solar botics
April 30, 2013
Whelp, many moons have passed since we posted last time (er, maybe that's a slight exaggeration), and many a thing have happened. We went to Las Vegas to the Magento conference, lasered some ukuleles, but mostly were in a mad rush preparing for the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo 2013. We teamed up with a wonderful costume designer and artist Angela Dale to produce wearable pieces that merge electronics and costume design.
Here's the first example - joint effort of Graeme Janzen, Angela Dale and Solarbotics. Custom Fosshape molded helmet is fitted perfectly to the wearer, and 3 layers of lasercut acrylic are edge-lit with 24 high-power white LEDs:
Our Voltron Helmet is based on the Black Lion toy design from Defender of the Universe, a popular cartoon in the mid eighties. Voltron consisted of 5 robot lions that joined together to form a Giant Robot that protected the galaxy from evil doers. The Black Lion in particular is special because it formed the head and torso of the combined Robot Voltron. Since the head had two different modes: Robot and Lion, it was intriguing to try to emulate the two modes as best as we could.
We used an Ardweeny, Multipack, TTLy FTDI, 2 Star Controllers, and 2 HXT900 servos to animate our replica and make it come alive with a few electronic bits. Special thanks to Angela Dale and Robyn Ayles (props designer and full-time faculty at the Mount Royal theater program) for their assistance!
This Chameleon Cocktail Ensemble was created by Angela and her assistants as a part of MakeFashion project. It uses 20 meter of addressable LED strips (add 5 meters in the headdress) powered by 3.7V LiPoly batteries, and ArduinoPro Mini to control the lighting sequences.
We also hosted the Arduino workshop at the Expo, with a slight costuming application bend and many blinky lights...
..and did lots of people watching.
Check out our Flickr photostream for details on more projects and photos!
MORE POSTS
LMR Start Here Kit, Beetlebot Preorders
Good news! Despite a few small setbacks and stumbling blocks, we've survived both the office move and Maker Faire! (I was going to say that at least nothing burned down, but that isn't exactly the case...). But now that things are settling back to normal, we'll be doing our best to bring you more awesome […]
Roundabout Pieces!
David Cook wrote a book. That book is a technically a Cook book, but we won't call it that. We'll call it Intermediate Robot Building (no, we don't have it yet, we're still waiting for our order!), and it heavily features the Roundabout Robot. If you're familiar with Mr. Cook's first book Robot Building for […]
Sumovore Atmel Brainboard code upgrade
The Atmel Brainboard is a very popular add-on to our Sumovore Sumo robot. But with newer releases of the WinAVR GCC programming suite, there is a difference in the way the source code is handled that will make it not compile and load properly. Bob Cook has been nice enough to tweak our source to […]
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.