virtuabotixArduino electronics · Colorado Springs
ARCHIVE / BRAND HOMEVirtuabotix
This was my company. I built and sold Arduino-ecosystem electronics under this name from 2011 until I folded it into Date Palm Media around 2017 (still my company today, just a different line of work). The store's closed, but the guides, the code, and the story are all still very much alive — I moved them to my main site so they'd stay that way.
What this place was
Virtuabotix LLC was my electronics company — I started it in 2011 and ran it out of Colorado Springs for a few good years. Real manufacturing, real customers, real support (I answered the comment sections myself, personally, for years, which is probably why people still email me about a sensor guide from 2013). I designed the products, wrote the guides, and wrote the code that shipped with them.
Manufacturing happened in-house — pick-and-place assembly, laser cutting, 3D printing, the whole line running out of the same building. There wasn't a grand strategy behind that. When you're small, owning the process is how you own the quality, and that was reason enough.
What we actually made
The core of the catalog was the Versalino board family — Arduino- compatible boards built around a bus connector so sensors and modules snapped together without a breadboard full of loose jumper wires. Around that I built out sensors (the DHT11 and DHT22 temperature/humidity modules, with the DHT11 library I wrote — not the first code to ever read that sensor, but the one everyone actually ended up using — it spread well past our own customer list), ultrasonic rangefinders, accelerometers, and full robot and rover kits for people who wanted to build something that actually moved.
Every product shipped with an actual guide, not a slip of paper inside the box. That's the part I'm proudest of, honestly.
The guides are still here
The documentation outlived the store. I've been restoring the guides on my main site with their original publish dates intact, and the writing is the same as it was — just live again instead of buried in an archive. A few to start with:
How to control temperature & humidity with a DHT11/DHT22, relays, a fan & a heater
The DHT11/DHT22 guide people still find years later — reading the sensor and switching relay-driven heating and cooling to hold a target range.
Writing a Bluetooth packet-based Arduino sketch for the Versalino Control board
Turning a joystick and a Bluetooth link into rover control — analog mapping, dead zones, and packet commands over BT2S.
Building a giant 8 foot by 5.25 foot robot arena! (Part 1)
The build log for the arena a few of us put together in a weekend for the Versalino Rove (beer and Mountain Dew included).
More of the archive keeps landing at josephdattilo.com/writing/ over time.
The code lives on too
The libraries I wrote for these products didn't stay Virtuabotix customers-only — the DHT11 library especially spread well beyond anyone who ever bought a sensor from me. They're all still maintained, over at josephdattilo.com/open-source/.
The designs are still on Thingiverse
The printable side of things never moved — the Virtuabotix Thingiverse account has been publishing 3D designs since 2011, and it's still up today, still free to print.
The whole story, and the guy behind it
Want the longer version — what it taught me, what it turned into, how it ended? That's over on the Virtuabotix history page. And if you want to know who's actually writing this, that's josephdattilo.com — me.
Looking for an old page?
If an old virtuabotix.com link brought you here — a product page, a guide, the old wiki — it should have forwarded you straight to wherever that content lives now. Deep links on this domain 301 automatically; you shouldn't need to go hunting. If one of them didn't land where you expected, let me know and I'll get it fixed.