Remote Control Pleo with Wii Nunchuck

This instructable describes how to remote-control Pleo (a friendly robotic dinosaur: http://www.pleoworld.com) with gestures using a pocket-sized setup. You can extend most parts of this instructable to control other kinds of robots. Here is a video demonstrating the result.

The 1-second delay between the nunchuck move and Pleo reaction is caused by slow servos in this robot. There is no good way to speed up Pleo's reaction as this will cause the robot overheating. But you can eliminate this delay in the source code if your robot can move faster.

Step 1 Get the Parts

For this project we will need the following parts:

• 2x XBee RF modems. I used XBee2, one with chip antenna and one with rpsma connector (the last one also requires duck antenna typically sold separately)
• 1x 3.3V Arduino Pro board that will decode nunchuck signals and turn them into Pleo commands. Other types of Arduino board will work just fine as long as they are 3.3V. The 5V version will require some additional tweaking to make it wrok with 3.3V
• 1x XBee breakout board is not necessary but will greatly simplify your life
• 1x Altoids box or similar project case
• 1x Molex connector housing to connect XBee to Pleo. I would actually recommend getting 2-3 of those. You can also solder wires to Pleo directly, but that's tricky. You can get it here: http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?qs=hSmm4fxMIuNmj4UzNb1XZA%3d%3d
• At least 4x 1.25mm sockets For the Pleo connector. In fact 20-30 of those as they are very easy to ruin while assembling the connector. To clarify this: you will need to insert these sockets into the housing to get the complete connector. Here are the sockets:
• 1x switch to turn the Arduino on/off. Anything of suitable size from RadioShack is good
• 1x 9V battery
• 1x 9V battery connector (get it from RAdioShack or make from old 9V battery)
• 1x RP-SMA antenna for the XBee (if you chose to get RPSMA version)
• 2x low power LEDs for mode indicators
• 2x XBee headers
• Some straight F headers and angle M headers will make your life easier
• Wires, solder, soldering iron, heat shrink and other standard project stuff
• 1x XBee Explorer USB is required, 2x are recommended for programming and debugging your XBees
• A 1Gb SD card. Don't try to buy a large card, really old small card will work better here.

Most of this stuff you can buy from Sparkfun Electronics (sparkfun.com). I also use some of their images here - they opensourced them recently. Sweeet!

Comments

[sunshiine]

He is cute!

[Honus]

Very cool!

[PeckLauros]

Nice work! Well done!