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Store update, 2014-10-15

Back orders

The long delayed Hong Kong order arrived this morning, which means all the back-ordered kits are leaving this afternoon. If you ordered a kit in the last two weeks you should already see a notice that a shipping label was printed.

Growth

Frequent orders and long lead times from suppliers means that my RFQ numbers all have an extra digit now. 100 motors at a time? Not enough. Quote me 1000, please. The warehouse is expanded, plans for resellers are starting to come together… It’s a really exciting time to be making robots!

Vacation

Now that the work of getting over the Maker Faire hump is done, I’m taking a road trip to Las Vegas. I’m looking forward to some beautiful vistas, all-inclusive hotel stays, and checking on the SYN Shop, the Las Vegas Hackspace. Why knows? Maybe I’ll even be able to pop in and say hi to Sarah and Mark at RobotArmy.com. They make a pretty sweet Delta robot.

What does this mean for you? Orders will not be flowing from the 17th to the ~28th. Shop for your heart’s desire now and we’ll get it into the mail Thursday evening.

DevFest Vancouver

DevFest is a week-long workshop-series and hackathon about bleeding-edge technologies for experienced developers taking place weeknights and over the weekend this November 3-9.

This year’s workshops cover

• cryptocurrencies,
• cloud-computing,
• smart-televisions,
• wearables,
• 3D-printing,
• virtual reality, and
• microcontrollers

Yours truly will be leading the microcontroller workshop Sunday, November 9, from 10am onward.

Seats are very limited! reserve your spot early.

Classes

Last night at VHS was our first “learn to use the band saw” class. In two weeks I’ll be leading a “how to use the chop saw” class. November 1 is scheduled to be Programming 101 with LEDs. You can find out all the details for these classes on the website for the Vancouver Hack Space.

In the news

Museograph visited our booth at the NYC World’s Maker Faire 2014 and acquired a Makelangelo #551 drawing of Audrey Hepburn, the picture at the top of the post.

Have you seen Marginally Clever mentioned in the news somewhere? Let us know in the forums!

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Store news, 2014-10-10

Today I have more art, some bad news, and some good news. (more…)

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Expansion is a good problem to have

Sharing

User deanville shared some pictures of his DIY Makelangelo in our forums.

Check out the whole gallery here

Thanks, Reddit

At the request of reddit user nortbotics I’ve changed the licensing of all the big thingiverse projects I’ve released. Instead of Creative Commons – Attribution – Non-Commercial they are now Creative Commons – Attribution – Share-Alike. That means you can do what you like with the designs – even make and sell them! – but you have to tell people where you got the plans, and if you change the designs you have to use the same license for the new design.

Expansion

A large part of the day was spent shopping for infrastructure upgrades. Shelves, shelves, and more shelves. This really excites me. When I started there were five or six items on a shelf. Then there were too many and I had to put product SKUs on everything. Now I have a product SKU and I’m going to have to add a physical address in the warehouse. What’s next, Kiva robots?

Instant gratification

I’ve installed a live chat feature. It should appear in the bottom right of your PC screen. When we’re both at computers you can reach out to me and get an immediate response. Now it’s even easier to tell me what you’ve got on your mind.

Hong Kong Delays

I have received confirmation from our HK suppliers that the big orders I am waiting on were shipped sunday evening (vancouver time). They should be here soon, at which point my postal carrier might just have a small heart attack or hernia trying to cart away all these orders.

On another good note, since my last post (yesterday?) four more Makelangelos have been turned on. I wonder who will be #700?

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So much to post, so little time.

Expansion

So much has been going on here, it’s incredible. I feel a bit like I’m playing real life Factorio.

I need more shelves because I’ve run out of space for robot parts, tools, and other great stuff. I’m having a hard time deciding between this shelf and This one. Which one do you think I should get?

Maker Faires

I’m told that Marginally Clever robots will be appearing at both Maker Faire Toronto November 22 & 23 (the Think/Haus booth) and Maker Faire Tokyo November 23 & 24. There’s also the Circle in the Square Look for them, learn about robots that make art, and ask about the coupon code.

Learn.* Updates

Thank you to everyone who’s written in and given great suggestions to improve the documentation.

• Added an exploded diagram to some posts. Thanks, Melissa!
• Improved explanations for wiring. Thanks, Rachel!
• Everyone in our forum: You rock.

Makelangelos Everywhere

At World’s Maker Faire 2014 there were 670 Makelangelos. In 13 days 19 more have been turned on.

How do I know? When a Makelangelo turns on for the very first time it phones home to get a number, and I put a pin in a map at the nearest city. See for yourself: here’s a map of Makelangelos everywhere.

New Products

I have two new products listed in the store and two more that I’m working on. Anyone who opened an account and joined the mailing list will get a notice a few days before I share the details on this blog. Think of it kind of like early access.

Classes

Tuesday, October 14, 8pm at the Vancouver Hack Space I’ll be running a short class on how to use the band saw. We’ll be chopping up scrap from the VHS laser cutter. Cost is $5.

Saturday, November 1, 1pm at the VHS I’ll be running a class on Programming 101 with Arduino and LED lights. $75 gets you a string of 64 LEDs and a power supply. The LEDs are the same ones used in the new VHS giant wall of LEDs.