Solarbotics will be back at the Seattle Robothon September 24 and 25, hosting a workshop building our Sumovore mini-sumo robot kit, and a beta kit - the Herbie Photovore! We had a lot of fun doing it last year, and many builders went on to compete the next day in the competition. And for the […]
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!
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PDXBot Video
We just received an inventory of PDXBot.04 DVDs that we're selling in part to raise funds for the Portland Area Robotics Society (PARTS). It's a pretty hefty video - over 2 hours long, with many features, including a few cameos of "The Dave and Grant Show" (we were there competing last year). It's a good […]
New GM11-14 mounting screws
BOY those are strange little screws on the face of the GM11-14 series of gear motors! 1.7mm diameter x 0.35mm thread pitch ain't a common bolt, but we found some 4mm long that we've made available for those of you looking for a precision method of mounting the motors. Check out part M1.7x0.35!
It's alive....ALIVE...!
We know this isn't a big deal to average-joe Solarbotics customer, but we are thrilled to have a new website platform up and running for almost a month now. We've still digging through what plugins work and could be improved, so please continue being patient with us. We are posting more holiday sale items, and […]
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Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.