Nuts and Volts author Robert Nansel has reviewed our SW2 kit and has written up an excellent review. You can get a sample magazine from the Nuts and Volts website or search their distributers page for where you can get the magazine. Check out the add on page 53 for our add, as well as […]
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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More Tidbits!
Well, it's once again that fantasmical time where we recap all the neat stuff we've been up to over the last week. There's nothing massively huge to announce today, but there are a few odds and ends... It's March, and St. Patrick's day is almost among us. For those of you who like to celebrate […]
Circuit: Lightstorm
Some of you may have found the LightStorm Pummers that Mark Tilden has made using some neat looking plastics. We've built our own variation of the circuit, which is a dark-activated, quad-bicore pseudo-random chaos generated, dual pummer circuit.
First GM10 robot!
We gave Grant a bit of the afternoon to put together a demo robot using the GM10. What project? Ah, the venerable Herbie, of course! Construction details (and a big pic) are on the motor detail link. Oh, and there's a video too! Read More...
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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.