For those of you that don’t know, the Heathkit HERO (Heathkit Educational Robot) was a ‘bot built in the early 1980s. [Rick] wasn’t satisfied with his model ETW-18’s programming interface, so decided to upgrade it to be able to run Python using a hacked wireless router. We’d agree that things have advanced since then, since this little guy was originally programmed in machine code using an onboard keypad.  As [Rick] points out, it’s “exactly as awful” as it sounds!

To begin restoring and upgrading his robot, a kit was obtained from [hero-1] to allow for a serial programming interface. Although an improvement, the desire was to be able to program this robot using Python, and to not have to have a cable running across the floor all the time. A router with a serial port was obtained from a thrift store, then hacked using [OpenWrt]. After fitting the components into the robot, [FR3DDY] was born, “A ~30 year old robot, accessible through wifi, capable of running Python.”

Be sure to check out his site, which has some videos we weren’t able to embed. He’s also included some Python code that he used to program it. If this has made you curious about the Python language, why not check out this recent post about learning it the hard way?