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Come out and meet me in 2014

Asides from all the usual work of shipping kits and helping people I’ve been hard at working growing my laser cutting business with an instangram project called #28daysoflaser. Every day I post something new I make with my laser cutter. Follow along and share with your friends, please.

I’m also preparing for 6 different public events this year:

• Vancouver Science World, March 15-16;
• Seattle Mini Maker Faire, March 22-23;
• San Mateo Bay Area Maker Faire, May 17-18;
• Vancouver Mini Maker Faire, June 7-8;
• Las Vegas DEFCON, August 7-10;
• New York Maker Faire, Sept 20-21;

Come on out and say hi! I love meeting new people and I’d love to pick your brain about making this site more useful to you.

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New Product Category: Sensors & Buttons!

Sensors & Buttons is starting off with a Single Pole, Double Throw switch and 3 pack of hall effect sensors with magnets. I’m looking forward to getting more photovoltaic sensors in stock so I can finally make a maze-solving robot.

So according to the mind map we’ve got a starting point for brain, muscle, nerve, and skeletal hardware. A goal for the near future is to add datasheets and tutorials for each item we stock, and then flesh out the rest of the map.

We’re also placing orders for belts and pulleys. One or two more parts and we’ll have everything you need to build a 3D printer. Should I get those parts in? Are you interested? What other parts would you like to see?

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New Product: 5.1 x 2.2 female power socket

ELEC-0045 female power sockets are really useful for putting your electronics in a box or enclosure. Keep your delicate wiring safe from the elements and little fingers. Screws in with a friction fit. Get some today!

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Send a lot of commands to an Arduino automatically

I’ve written some tutorials and published code samples about teaching an Arduino like device to understand Gcode, the language of modern CNC manufacturing machines like 3D printers. I’m very grateful that so many people have found it useful and are building great robots. By the way: If you’ve made something, please share it in our forum gallery! It really inspires and motivates me.

Now that the devices are good at listening to commands, I’m getting requests almost daily for a program that can send a lot of commands to the Arduino.

Today I’m pleased to announce the release of GcodeSender version 1 for free on Github.

It will “talk” to any serially-connected device at 57600 baud. It waits for the “>” character between each line so that it doesn’t flood the other end of the line and cause a mistake. It can send a lot more than gcode, but I have a history of picking terrible program names and I’m reluctant to break with tradition.

It should work with all the samples and tutorials I’ve written in the recent past, including all the robots available through the shop. If you’re familiar with the Makelangelo software then this program won’t be any surprise to you.

Please give it a try and leave your comments in the forums.

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New product: Bearings!

Today I’m happy to announce that we’re now stocking three kinds of bearings to help you solve your mechanical challenges. (more…)