Remember those tiny little droids skittering around the pristine corridors of the Death Star in Star Wars? [heychaostheory] has put together something vaguely along the lines of those charming little mobile toasters. It’s an autonomous mouse droid with party mode!
The build is interesting in that it’s based on an off-the-shelf metal robot chassis—which provides mounting points for the gearmotors and wheels that make up the drivetrain. The mouse droid body sits atop this, being a 3D printed part that is afixed with heat set inserts and nylon standoffs. It’s 3D printed and expertly decorated with a fun vibe. Inside the body lives an Arduino Uno, hooked up to an L298 motor driver board and ultrasound sensors used for obstacle avoidance. It’s also got a smattering of LEDs to flash, because blinkenlights matter. The best bit, though, is the party mode button, which fires off music via a DFPlayer Mini module.
The mouse droid may not be as flashy and imposing as the Droideka or as mechanically impressive as BB-8, but that just makes it more accessible and fun to build. You can easily create one at full scale without breaking the bank. If you’re cooking up your own fun droids in the workshop, don’t hesitate to let us know. Video after the break.
Cool build! Although I’d be concerned about party-goers inadvertently kicking it or tripping over it. Perhaps I just have unusually careless friends :)
And it did immediately remind me of the Robot Chicken take on those little Death Star droids…
https://youtu.be/qbBdixsqC3U?si=HNAyYVgmCKABt9TG
I would be worried about bringing it around my partying friends as well! Have only done it once so far, with supervision :)
Turning it into a beer can delivery robot should ensure people will constantly look down to search a loaded one.
Thank you for the feature 🫶
That party mode reminds me of an “explosion button” i put on my Ahmed Mohammed clock (based on the one that kid brought to school and got arrested over because IT LOOKED LIKE A BOMB to Texas school officials. When you hit that button, you got a cool sound effect and light show. Other buttons played clips of music such as Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” See:
https://github.com/judasgutenberg/ultimate_alarm_clock
That whole story is a piece of work. There is nothing you anyone could say that would dispute that thing wasn’t deliberately made to look suspicious
It’s a good amount of work, after the actual project is completed, to then re-visit the whole journey, and write-it-up for others to access, in an manner that they will appreciate.
I hope we seem more from this contributor in future.