RobotGrrl EYE50 C2MTL

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, May 19th, 2013

We are selected as a top 20 finalist in the EYE50 competition, a part of C2MTL.

Here is the video that we submitted:

Our big idea starts on a small scale: working on building the experience needed to create anything from your imagination, using DIY robots. These will be the toys for the future, where everyone can learn by making, tinkering, soldering, and programming.

Read more about our project on the EYE50 Intel Platform page and the C2 EYE50 page.

More info about the EYE50 competition here:

C2-MTL, in partnership with Intel, is seeking the EYE50, the 50 Emerging Young Entrepreneurs who will transform the world and shape the future. Prove to us your idea is big enough to be the next big thing and get the chance to have an audience for your idea during the C2-MTL conference.

The opportunity to be here and meet other people with interesting ideas, a driven passion, and creativity is great. I really want to learn how people have harnessed their creativity to earn money, and how they evaluated what risks to take to grow further without sacrificing core values.

With the knowledge gained from this week, I hope to put it into action with some of the future robots & projects we are making I’m sure there will be a few moments where someone will say something and it can put things into a different perspective, to look at them differently, and perhaps realize there is something really cool that can happen!

Winning the grand prize would put us one step closer to achieving our goal of making DIY robots as the toys for the future. We would be able to put some money towards more inventory for the RoboBrrd and Buddy 4000 electronics; a highly interactive display for Maker Faire NY; development pieces for other robots; more machines for our rapid prototyping ‘bot farm’; and more development.

Either way, we’ll still be making robots of course! (Stay tuned for a blog post later this week about our Buddy 4000 + BLE iPad App work in progress)

One of the fun things to think about is that DIY robots are really one of several stepping stones to our ultimate goal: making robots become creatures themselves, where they have their own robo-culture, stories that they pass down from generation to generation, and personalities… a real robot society!

A big thank you to everyone who shared and liked our link. It helped our video reach higher up on the page, and we were accepted!

It goes without saying that RoboBrrd wouldn’t be where it is now without the help from others in the Maker community. Read more about RoboBrrd’s history here.

If you are at C2MTL, please come say hi to us (RoboBrrd, Buddy4000, and RobotGrrl)! We’ll be wearing an aqua-blue wearable electronic necklace that lights up white to reveal a lightning bolt design. See ya there!

Posted in: Fun.

Introducing Buddy 4000!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, May 9th, 2013

Buddy 4000 is a classy robot chassis designed to express robot emotions with an artistic flair.

See it in action in this video!

Buddy 4000 is available NOW in the RoboBrrd Store! Special introductory sale, $5 off!

It is everything you are looking for in a robot chassis that looks like a classic robot. Perfect as a chassis for a small project, or just a robotic statue.

Documentation

There is documentation available for building the robot, example electronics, and programming. Check out the main page for Buddy 4000 to see them all.

Open Source Hardware

Yes, Buddy 4000 is OSHW! You can view the .stl’s in our 3D viewer mode, and download an archive of all the files. Hopefully this will let everyone be able to make their own Buddy 4000 (or even a derivative of it). Send pics if you do! Go check it out.

Name Your Price

There is a special ‘name your price’ feature on the Buddy 4000 store page. The extra money is going towards our robotics fund / Maker Faire NY travel fund! We really appreciate your help, and hope to see you at Maker Faire NY!

Inspiration

Buddy 4000 was created to look like a modern version of the old ‘tin toy’ robots. We put much effort into the design of the ‘bot, so hopefully it meets this goal. It took a while to finish this off, especially with all the documentation. Enjoy it! If it makes someone smile, it has been worth it.

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Thanks to all the twitter people for following this project over the course of developing it. It’s been fun, and the replies were always interesting to read!

Now go get your Buddy 4000 here, or make your own here!

Posted in: 3D, Fun, Projects, Robot.

Fun Robot Project Complete

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, April 21st, 2013

Hooray! The iterations on the ‘Fun Robot Project’ are complete! Since the last post, more work was done on the faceplate/style aspect.

The first idea was to print the style directly onto the piece. However, this made accessing everything inside of the pieces quite difficult. Shown below is the head, with the LEDs and servo in it.

It looks cool from the outside, but it had to be glued together (yikes).

That really didn’t work out. Instead, went with separate pieces for the styles.

In the CAD it was pretty easy to make ‘negative’ extrusions- so they could be printed in a different colour of filament. In order to do this properly, the shapes were scaled down by 0.96. If it was a (what I call) ‘inside-facing-shape’, then it was scaled up by 1.01. This would leave enough space for the kerf, so it could be glued in.

The colours make it look snazzy!

This wasn’t done using dual-extrusion, we’re debating whether it would be worthwhile to upgrade or not. Taking these off the build platform has to be done very carefully, otherwise they jump all over.

Now for the electronics! There is enough space inside of the body of the robot for everything. There are two perfboard breakouts: one for the RGB LEDs, and one for the servos and power distribution. The microcontroller is a 3.3V Arduino Pro Mini, and a LiPower board transforms the 3.7V (or whatever it is, can’t remember) to 5V for the servos and LEDs.

Here is how it all fits inside of the robot. The servo cables and battery are nearest to the front wall:

Everything gets patiently wiggled inside. The servo & power perfboard breakout goes near the bottom.

That breakout then gets folded over, and the servos are plugged in.

Finally, after more poking, it looks like this!

Since it has its battery inside, it will be able to be wireless. Maybe there is room inside somewhere for an XBee as well.

Because of the sockets that are on the arms, head, and feet, it has a few degrees of posability. Combining the poses with the servo movements is going to be fun. Check it out!

Robot is greeting you:

Robot is sad:

Robot is happy:

Robot is cool:

This week we’ll be working on programming it, making a video, getting it on the RoboBrrd Store, and documentation.

But of course before all of this happens- we need to find a name for this robot! We originally made it to look similar to the old ‘tin toy’ robots. Hmm…

Anyway, it is nice to reflect on where this robot has emerged from. Check it out, taking a leisurely swim in the pool of fails!

More robots to come… of course!

ROBOT DANCIN DANCIN TO THE MUSIC OF STEPPERS STEPPIN!

Posted in: 3D, Fun, Projects, Robot.

RoboBrrd 3D Printed Pieces – OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

Introducing the new RoboBrrd 3D printed pieces!

These are all the 3D printing files for creating your own RoboBrrd! You can download the .stl files and get printing right away and also view the dimensional drawings. Check out the webpage!

The dream of having RoboBrrd as a widespread toy all around the world is what is really motivating us. OSHW combined with availability of 3D printers, it can be possible!

One day, there will be more RoboBrrds in the world than Furbys, and everyone will make it themselves.

It seems odd that we go to a store to purchase a toy when we can create one ourselves. So let’s do it, and make a positive impact! Manufacture our own toys, customize them, learn about them, build them into robots, make them better.

We put a lot of effort into the webpage by making the pics look fun & groovy. With the 3D Viewer Mode, it’s great to be able to spin, zoom, rotate 3D files. Many people dismiss RoboBrrd as goofy/stupid/useless, so it is also nice to show the thought that went in to RoboBrrd.

On the technical side, creating the pieces to work with both the laser cut pieces and 3d pieces was interesting. The two variables were the extrusion width, and the kerf. Figuring out the extrusion width was straight forward- we measured the mdf with calipers, and they said 3.05mm. As for the kerf, it was exactly +0.2mm different than the laser cut ones. Funnily enough, the laser cut kerf adjustment was -0.1mm, which meant all that needed to be changed was the – sign to a + sign.

There is a donation button on the webpage, which will help us to create even more robots. Each donation will come with a ‘RoboBrrd Name Card’ that you can fill out and give to your newly created RoboBrrd. If you do donate, thanks a bunch!

Well, what are you waiting for? LET’S GO PRINT A ROBOBRRD!

Posted in: 3D, Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

Make: Lego and Arduino Projects Foreword

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, December 30th, 2012

Have you seen this book: Make: Lego and Arduino Projects? It’s all about adding in Arduinos to your Lego robot projects! This is really helpful if you find you want to do more with Lego robots, but find the NXT too restrictive.

It’s written by John Baichtal (@johnbaichtal), Matthew Beckler (@mbeckler) & Adam Wolf (@adamwwolf)! I’ve met these people at Maker Faire before, they are really cool. They asked me to write the foreword for their book, what a great honour!

This book goes along with the Bricktronics shield for Arduino. It’s how you can connect the NXT motors and sensors to the Arduino. They sent me one, cause even though I don’t have some Lego anymore, I’ll probably use the L293D for something (can never have enough of those chips eh!)

Here is a closeup of the board, not a lot of empty space and the TIP120′s will be standing up:

Here is the board when it is assembled. When following their kit instructions, the steps aren’t ordered from shortest components to tallest, so you may want to jump around a bit.

Look at this, the plastic connector things make it look like a giant compared to the Arduino / Diavolino!

CONNECTOR THINGS ARE STARING AT YOU!

Back in the day of RCX’s, the ‘connectors’ were much simpler and didn’t cost as much, they were just a few wires attached to a custom Lego brick. It was a lot easier back then to wire up your own lights or whatever.

I’m looking forward to using the L293D in some project at some point in time. As for the rest of the board, perhaps use it as robot artwork or something. Or if I find someone that is in to Arduinos and Legos, give it to them

Thanks again to the authours for the invite to write the Foreword. I hope it will get the readers motivated and ready to build (and read)!

More to come later about the latest and greatest RoboBrrd news!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, News.

RoboBrrd on Montreal CTV News ‘What’s On’

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, December 27th, 2012

If you didn’t catch the little snippet of RoboBrrd on TV because of the rush of the holidays, no worries- here is the recording! RoboBrrd starts at the 0:58 mark.

Mega thanks to Christine Long (@CTVChristine) for the interview snippet, and SpikenzieLabs (@SpikenzieLabs) for letting us set up there and use their laser cutter

It’s great to see DIY robots on TV and spreading the word to even more people. Perhaps people who never thought about building robots will now be inspired to do so now!

RoboBrrd loves chirping on TV

Check out the recording!

Posted in: Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

Happy Holidays from RoboBrrd & all the robots!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, December 24th, 2012

Posted in: Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).