February 2013 Newsletter

MakerBeam is a T-slot technology that makes complex machine building easier and more effective and fit many products already available from Technobots. So whether you are building a 3D printer, a camera slider or a robot, MakerBeam is worth checking out.

T-slot is a popular technology widely used for industrial automation, robotics and machine enclosures. These compatible mini-T components simplify complex machine building and give you enormous flexibility.

Creative Robotics thought it would be handy if you could just buy a wheel that had the electronics and motor all built into the wheel so they set about designing one and the result is the HUB-ee - just bolt it onto a chassis, apply power and away you go!

• Removable 12mm gearmotor - available in a range of gear ratios (currently available 20:1 and 30:1)
• Integrated, open source PCB with:
  • Motor driver IC
  • 32 stripe (128 counts per revolution) quadrature encoder
• Designed for tyres or tank tracks
• Two internal threaded inserts (metric M3 or imperial 4/40) make it easy to bolt on to a chassis.
• LEGO(r)
• Compatible mounting sockets (with a Mindstorms NXT compatible PCB coming soon!)

They are easy to take apart so you can remove or replace the motor or electronics, and they are developing a range of different circuit boards with features ranging from LEGO NXT compatibility to full closed loop speed control (so you can plug it in and control it as easily as a hobby servo).

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer board that plugs into a TV and a keyboard. It's a miniature ARM-based PC which can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays High-Definition video.

Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM1176JZFS processor with FPU and Videocore 4 GPU
GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
512MB RAM
Boots from SD card, running a version of the Linux operating system (supplied separately)
10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket
HDMI video socket
2 x USB 2.0 sockets
RCA composite video socket
SD card socket
Powered from microUSB socket
3.5mm audio out jack
Header for GPIO and serial buses
Header footprint for JTAG connector
Connector for Raspberry Pi HD video camera
Size: 85.6 x 53.98 x 17mm

We also stock low cost accessories such as SD cards, USB keyboard, USB mouse, leads etc. We will also be having a complete starter kit late February.