Useless (Xmas) Machines!

Dave Hrynkiw
December 13, 2010

We're teaming up with Brett Coulthard of Saskview.com to get their version of the Useless Machine put together as a parts bundle. We just finished it Friday night, and quick-posted tweets & a few photos of it, and are shipping today!

What comes in the bundle? Pretty much everything you need to successfully build a Useless Machine of your own:

  •   1 x 39300 Black acrylic "Useless Box" construction set (with nut/bolt hardware)
  •   1 x SWT8 DPDT toggle switch
  •   1 x SWT9 SPDT lever switch
  •   2 x #2 mounting screws for SWT9
  •   1 x BHoldAA 2-AA battery pack
  •   1 x DSST (double sided sticky tape, for mounting the battery pack)
  •   6" hookup wire
  •   1 x GM4 gear motor
  •   4 x "Little Rubber Feet" to protect your Useless machine from abrasive counter tops!

We're only offering the box in black acrylic at the moment (experimented with clear - ehk), but if you ask really nicely, we probably could run one in red, blue, green, orange, white and (if you really want it), clear. Call in if you want any of those options.

Speaking of cool "Useless machines", Tony Youngblood's Christmas version was just featured on the Makezine Blog. He built his with our GM8 for super-fast response (we did our bundle with the slower GM4 - we like a more deliberate "ME: OFF" response).

MORE POSTS

August 17, 2001
Spyder Detail Pictures

One of the most popular BEAM Walkers ever built was Mark Tilden's VBug 1.1 - Spyder. We've recently had the opportunity to shoot a series of high-resolution detail pictures of this robot, which we're now making available to you!

October 17, 2012
Wednesday Cool Links: Spiderbot, Solar S...

It's Wednesday! Hooray! Huzzah! We're celebrating because... Well, ok, we have nothing big to celebrate right now. So we're going to celebrate having nothing to celebrate with the traditional and only appropriate way possible... BROWSING THE INTERNET! Indeed, we've been celebrating this time-honoured tradition with steadfast dedication, and it's our pleasure to share it with […]

March 25, 2004
Solarbotics Antweight

Adam Conus sent us a nice little message about his antweight combat robot The Fly.: Western Allied Robotics is kicking off another year of antweight combat events and I need new motors. (Because I'm very, very hard on them!) Still, they're cheap and light. Check out- http://home.comcast.net/~conusa/adam.htm to see the robot complete with solarbotics sticker!

August 4, 2006
Heritage Day Monday

Monday is Heritage Day here in Alberta, Canada, so we will all be out Heritage-ing it up, and enjoying our all too short summer. So if you want to go all Heritage on BEAM, and buy a SolarRoller kit, we'll ship it to you when we are back in the office Tuesday!

Solarbotics Ltd Logo
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.

cart