Our buds over at Solarbotics have finally put together special parts bundles for two of the three projects in my Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots book. The kit for the Coathanger Walker costs US$27.70 and the kit for Mousey the Junkbot goes for $19.60. These bundles do not include everything, so check your parts lists carefully. For instance, the Walker kit does not include the 40-tooth plastic gear and the Mousey kit doesn’t include a mouse. There are some bonuses though, such as a set of Solarbotics’s photodiode optical sensors for Mousey, which are likely more sensitive than the IR receivers that you’d pull from a mouse, as suggested in the book. The bundles also include a spool of Hydro-X solder, a fave among BEAM builders, including the Big God hisself, Mark Tilden.
These bundles couldn’t have come out at a better time, as a version of the Mousey project is going to be published in the second issue of Make magazine.