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The last few months there have been some pretty amazing little robots posted online for the Tinkering Studio / Exploratorium #MicrobitVirtualConcert.  I wanted to make something and participate and my 6 year old was interested in helping out.  I don’t have a Micro:Bit, but I’ve got a few other microcontrollers and the Adafruit Circuitplayground Express is perfect for this kind of project.

Here was our basic process:

1. Brainstorm ideas
2. I eat a frozen pizza and save the cardboard
3. Sketch of robot – and what it should do
4. Taping sketch of robot over white cardboard
5. Tracing sketch with a pencil with enough pressure to leave an indentation
6. Coloring robot
7. Measuring / designing a 3D printed plastic part to fit the servo (before I committed more plastic to it)
8. Scratching my head and jamming together circuitpython code for servos and musical notes together.  I had really wanted to also have the eyes light up with Neopixels too, but…
9. Ultimately, I had a sketch for lights + musical tones and another for servo + musical tones.  My daughter made the executive decision to go with servo + musical tones. 1
10. Revising the design to include some “wings” for more surface area to glue to the card board and increase stability
11. Adding extra “wings” so that the popsicle sticks could pivot on a piece of paperclip in the plastic holder, rather than in the cardboard
12. “Drilling” holes in the popsicle sticks with drill bits rotated by hand
13. Gluing in servo holder and just lashing bits of things together in the back with hot glue, blue tape, and some wire
14. Testing different kinds of tails before gluing the final version in place
15. The code and STL’s aren’t anything amazing and I didn’t do a lot to comment them.  However, if you might find them useful, I’ve uploaded them to PrusaPrinters.

Here’s the final robot in action:

1. Cephalopod Robot Friend, the story so far
2. Cephalopod Robot Friend Progress
3. CuttleBot Body and OpenSCAD Design Tips
4. An Assembled CuttleBot Body
5. Building the Monocle Top Hat Cat for #MicrobitVirtualConcert
6. Companion Robots and Maker Faire Season!

1. What can I say?  In order to bring her onto the project, I had to agree to give her final cut. [↩]