Hull Pixelbot

A mobile pixel that's simple to build, fun to play with and, above all, cheap to make.

rob Miles

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Description

The Hull Pixelbot is a little robot that was born in Hull in the UK.

It carries pixels, so it is a pixelbot. It is designed to be simple to build, fun to play with and, above all, cheap to make. The chassis is made from 3D printed parts and the electronics and motors needed to get a robot up and running can be purchased for less than 15 pounds.

You can use it anywhere you need a tiny, mobile, pixel. It’s a great way to explore programing and robotics.

It uses two processors. The Arduino based motor controller provides autonomous behaviours via a built-in scripting language. Scripts can be stored within the Arduino and execute directly on it. We've added an esp8266 to provide network connectivity and cloud based software for a variety of control options. All the designs and software are Open Source on GitHub

Details

The designs for the 3D printed components and all the software for both processors on the robot can be found here.

A video of the robots training for their appearance in my Lecture in Rhyme all about them. They are being controlled using MQTT from an Azure IOT Hub.

A video of the robots showing autonomous behaviour. Each robot is running a program that was downloaded over MQTT from Azure into an ESP 8266. The program is interpreted by code running in the Arduino motor controller, and stored in EEPROM in the device. Programs can be updated at any time, even when another program is running.