Winter is not quite here yet. But close. It’s the second day of the last day of summer in 2013 today, according to the calendar at least. So lets prepare to that early by making sure all the new products are looked at. Now, how that makes sense? I am not sure. This was just […]
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
Wednesday Links: Ballet, Draw-bots and K...
Yet another selection of hand-picked links from all over the interwebs: Visualizing Ballet .. using Lilypad Arduino. Looks beautiful, produces drawing-like results and helps dancers to trace their movements for necessary feedback. (Via Arduino blog) Tiny CNC-bot Beautiful little Piccolo, in it's second incarnation (first one was all clear acrylic). 3D printed Katana Case Is […]
Iron Man & Solarbotics at Comic Exp...
We often work with people with very interesting projects. This time, it's an impressive Iron Man MkIII costume build, by Phillip Vatour of Calgary. Phillip had come into our offices one day and said: "You might be interested in seeing what I've been building with the stuff I buy here...". He pulled out his phone […]
Heartbleed & Solarbotics
As I imagine most of you out there have heard by now, there's a pretty serious vulnerability in the OpenSSL that was announced on April 7th called CVE-2014-0160, better known as Heartbleed. For those of you wondering what the heck this "Heartbleed" thing is, awhile back OpenSSL added a "heartbeat" feature which allowed servers and […]
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.