SBOT the Recycled Robot

SBOT is a multifunctional robot constructed of recycled material. He moves on command. He additionally displays the time in an attached LED Matrix alarm clock. He can be charged using solar panels, turbines, and other sources of clean energy. SBOT will continue to learn new tricks throughout his doggy life. Below is a more detailed description of what his functions are and how they work. Woof.

Step 1: Materials

Mechanical Hardware:

Two Servos and servo compatible wheels

Two different sized empty food cans

Gears (for the eyes or ears)

An array of old nuts, washers, and bolts, to add onto the eyes

Two back wheels attached by an axle (taken from an old toy rc car)

Two nuts to put the axle through and epoxy to the can

Two green LEDs

An old spring for the tail

Solder iron and solder

Breadboard

Jumper wires

Electrical Hardware:

1 Arduino

1 IR Sensor

1 IR sensor remote control (purchased from Radioshack, but can use any IR remote)

Black and red wire

Toggle switch

Adafruit 4-digit-7-segment LED Display with i2c Backpack

RTC and Lithium module with coin cell battery included

Sparkfun Lithium Ion Battery

SparkFun USB LiPoly Charger - Single Cell

Adafruit mintiboost kit

Piezo Buzzer

Software:

Arduino environment

Servo library

Wire Library

RTC Library

Adafruit LED backpack library

Adafruit GFX library

Make it Robotics Library

Step 2: Mechanical Assembly

Take the two cans. The small one will be the head and the larger, the body. Poke a hole through the bottom, back of the head and top, front of the body. Screw and lock them together with a screw and washer.

Next, use the two nuts to slip an axle through the center and attach the wheels. Glue onto the bottom back of the body. These are the back wheels, or paws.

The front wheels are two servos, glued together and then glued to the front bottom of the can.

For the eyes, two arrangements of sandwiched washers, gears, bolts, etc with the holes lined up in the center should do. Optionally, you may fill in the center holes with a led by slipping it through the hole, soldering wires to the negative and positive and gluing them slightly apart so they don’t short. Glue the eye arrangements down at the back of the top of the head and its magic! SBOT’s got eyes! The ears can be made of any material in a proper size and shape. Glue them to the sides of the eyes. Connect the two led’s powers together and grounds together through jumper wires and insert the power into the digital 10 pin on Arduino and insert the ground into the ground pin on a breadboard connected to the Arduino's ground.

Step 3: Clock Assembly and Programming

Refer to Adafruit’s soldering instructions for the LED Matrix backpacks.

Refer to the above Adafruit fritzing image for connecting the modules to the Arduino. Use a new breadboard. Attach the piezzo buzzer to pin 11 and ground. If necessary, you may use the breadboard. Glue the LED display to the breadboard and the breadboard to the side of the robot. Upload the following code with included alarm setting(plays the imperial march at the time of your choice). Note that the code is a combination of Adafruit’s example titled clock_sevenseg_ds1307 and instructables.com/id/How-to-easily-play-music-with-buzzer-on-arduino-Th/, as well as my own little tweaks and changes.

Step 4: Rechargeable Battery

Assemble the Mintiboost circuit according to Adafruit instructions.

Insert the battery into BAT IN on the charging cell. Now for the System out, solder the assembled Mintiboost's power and ground to the negative and positive outputs.

You now have a fully functioning 5v output battery to wirelessly power your arduino and robot.

Note that you need a barrel jack-wall or barrel-jack USB adapter to charge the lithium ion cell.

Step 5: Servos and Remote Control

Connect the IR Sensor's output to pin 10, the ground to the ground on the breadboard, and the power to 5v. Upload the following code (this is the final accumulative code. It contains every step of this instructable.

Connect the left servo to pin 6, the right to pin 7.

SW1 and SW3=Forward + Reverse

SW2 and SW4= Right and Left

SW7=Stop moving

SW5= Hit the lights

SW6==Sound

SW8=the date on the led matrix

Voila you're done.