µBob biped robot

Since I had the schematic in Fritzing already, I decided to use it for a test of the printed circuit board etching process, which I wanted to learn. So I made a simple design for it:

Then I printed it on a shiny calendar paper on my laser printer, and transferred the toner with an iron. Initially I made a mistake and printed it like it was, while I should have printed a mirrored version:

But I quickly re-did the whole thing. Then the acid bath, and cutting the margins, and voila, the finished PCB:

I still need to drill the holes, but I don't have the drill bit for the 0.5mm holes -- waiting for it to ship in a day or two.

As requested, I drew a simple schematic for this robot. The Fritzing file is in the repository (although the ESP-03 module part in it probably has wrong dimensions).

After making a simple pose system, with tweening between poses, time to do the first walk.

As you can see, I had to replace the feet -- otherwise the robot was falling to the side when it swayed too fast. I went ahead and gave them a little more interesting shape.

It also has an USB charger for the battery under the hat.

A little bit of programming done. The repository with the source code is in the links.

So, basically, I have a Lua console over telnet over WiFi, and a convenient way to send files to the robot using netcat. Not having to connect the serial cables to do anything on it should make it all much more convenient.

Ah, right, the robot has a hat now, which actually helps it by moving its center of mass a little higher. Next to it you can see the ESP-03 module that I used -- which is quite tiny!