BrickCircuits First Anniversary Celebration!

Now updated with pictures!

BrickCircuits celebrated it's First Anniversary on April 2nd. This anniversary marks our first full year of developing and producing electronic products to enhance your models.

As part of our First Anniversary Celebration, we have some exciting new product to announce!

First we'd like to introduce some variety to the LightBeam. Right now the LightBeam comes with bright LEDs in a single color, White. If you attended either Brickworld or BrickFair last year, you may have seen the special version of the LightBeam we did for the Charity Auction at each event. Those were exclusive items that we custom made for the occasion using Blue LEDs instead of White.

Today we are introducing several color versions of the LightBeam: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue. They all come with the same great features of the White version of the LightBeam, just with different colors for the LEDs. And just in case you were wondering, we still plan to provide an exclusive, one-of-a-kind version of the LightBeam for the Charity Auctions at Brickworld and BrickFair this year.

Next, let's talk about lighting. Our Interior Lighting Module, the ILM101, has a single bright White LED that can light up the interior of a model. We'd like to give you more options for lighting your model interiors, so today we are introducing a second version of the Interior Lighting Module called the ILM102. The ILM102 has three of the same bright White LEDs as are on the ILM101. Three times the light, for less than half the cost of three ILM101s!

This new module is long and narrow, instead of square like the ILM101. At 12 studs long by 2 studs wide, it should fit perfectly in a number of locations, especially passenger coaches. Your passengers won't have to ride the rails in the dark anymore!

Another big difference is that the ILM102 does not have an onboard battery. Instead it has an external power connector that will allow a selection of power sources. Initially we have two choices for powering the ILM102. The first is a standard AA size battery holder that is good for literally days of operation from a single cell. The second is a Lithium Polymer (LiPo) rechargeable battery pack that is both very light and very small.

While we're at it, we might as well add rechargeable batteries to our other products, the single light version of the Interior Lighting Module and the LightBeam. We plan to offer both these products (including all the color choices announced above for the LightBeam) with the option for a LiPo rechargeable battery that mounts to the board in place of the current battery clip. These will be a little more expensive up front, but will save lots of money in the long run, not to mention being easier on the environment.

With all these rechargeable batteries being added to our products, we realized we would need to offer a charger.

But we couldn't just make an ordinary charger in a little plastic box, now could we? Nope. Instead, we decided that our new LiPo Battery Charger, the BCL101, would include an enclosure built from Lego bricks!

We are thrilled to be offering this board/brick set, and we think you'll love the design!

We should also mention that both the Interior Lighting Module (ILM101),

and the LightBeam (LBM101)

have received a makeover, and are now sporting a deep blue color and the BrickCircuits logo.

That's about it for our new First Anniversary product announcements. These new products are in the final stages of development, and will be released into production in the coming weeks. As we firm up production plans, we will post more information on our website about ordering these products, including final pricing and availability dates. We plan to release each new product as it is ready, with the first releases starting in late April. We hope to have all these new products in stock and ready for order by the end of May.

Thanks for helping us celebrate our First Anniversary! We've had a great first year, and we're looking forward to many more to come!