- Well hello.
I have a robot, it's in this box.
Today I'm going to build
a little tiny quadrupedal walking robot.
It's a Arduino based DIY kit.
It takes about an hour.
And I'm gonna have a lot of fun doing this.
Let's see what's in the box.
Okay, I got some baggage.
First bag, we have.
These are all of our servos.
These are Tower Pro MG90S.
So these are metal gear servo's.
Pretty nice.
There should be eight in this kit.
And we have another bag.
This is our electronics kit.
We have a remote, so this is IR controlled.
You can hack in an app and do it from your phone,
but you'd have to add a Bluetooth module to this kit.
What else we got in here?
We got our Arduino, we have a custom PCB.
Let's go ahead and actually get in here.
Okay.
So.
We have a four cell battery bank.
Our Arduino which is conveniently already
mounted in our PCB.
Every pin on this Arduino is broken out,
which is quite nice.
And over here we have nine servo pins.
So we only need eight.
But you have one extra one if you want to add,
you know, an end effector or,
or some neat little tooled robot.
The beauty of this being an open source kit is that
the whole thing is hackable.
All the files are available online.
And you can do whatever you want with it.
You can make it your own.
This is a ultrasonic distance sensor.
So we can program the Arduino to, you know, sense walls,
whatever you want it to do.
We've got our remote and here's the IR sensor.
Hiding in the bag,
we're just going to leave that all bagged up for now.
'Cause we'll need it later.
We have all of our laser cut parts.
Slow down turbo, remove masking tape from parts.
Ooh that takes time.
We'll do that anyway.
Oh yeah, a little bit of hardware.
Oh, look at the tiny little wrench.
Oh, it's so cute.
So while there is a manual, it's a little small for me.
So in advance of this.
I made a big manual.
So let's take our first look inside.
We have a little, a little friend to help us along the way.
Let's get our wood out here and.
Then start building.
So these are laser cut parts.
And why they mask it like this.
I think I brought a tool.
Is so you can see all the smoke that comes through
when you blast with a laser.
And it,
it can make the edges of your person not look so nice.
They use a big industrial roll of masking tape,
that's rather expensive in my experience but,
totally worth it if you do a lot of laser cutting like I do.
So all these parts are MDF.
Oh jeez this going to take forever.
I might just skip this part.
I think we'll do a little montage and I'm going to pop out
all these parts and prep all the pieces.
And then we'll get to assembly.
Before I do that.
Let me tell you about our sponsor.
- [Narrator] Private internet access has a VPN
that encrypts all of your internet traffic.
And uses a safe protected IP.
Connect up to five devices.
Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, and Lennox.
Featuring an internet kill switch.
That keeps you in control of your connection.
Try risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee
at the link below.
(soft upbeat music)
Really need to find myself more of these kits,
so I can build them myself.
Like we have a laser here, I have my laser.
MDF is cheap.
And all these parts are really cheap.
I always found the problem with kits like this is
you build it once and then you're like, oh this is neat.
I'll use it for a week and be really, really happy with it.
And then it ends up on a shelf and it sits around.
But with the advent of Arduinos and all these
reprogrammable little computers.
If you stop loving it,
you just tear it apart.
Use the parts for other things, like these 9g servos.
They were ubiquitous, you can use them in anything.
(fast upbeat music)
So there are multiple different types of ped, so to speak.
So pedal, as in walking.
We are bipedal, this is a quadruped.
So it has,
four legs.
There are hexapods and octopods, and it,
it keeps going up and up and up.
So this one has two degrees of freedom per leg.
We have a rotate right here around this axis,
and then we have a lift access that's
actually going to be in the arm.
You'll see us build that a little bit later.
So we're a little limited compared to some,
but it's enough to jog around, or you know,
if you're just trying to build a little kit for a kid.
You know, you want to have a fun little hobby to,
to sit down for an afternoon and teach a kiddo
how to, you know, follow instructions.
I mean, it's the first step.
And then you can get to modifying it and make it your own.
Have fun.
That's my favorite part.
(fast upbeat music)
So this entire project is actually off of
a place called Tindie.
It's like Etsy for nerds.
Highly suggested,
we'll have the link down in the 'doobly-do.
The mePed was designed by Scott Pierce.
And he's a maker based in Idaho.
Who was making kits for something called the meArm.
Very similar to this.
Like three degrees of freedom robotic arm.
And as he was making a little money selling these opensource
kits as, as he was allowed to.
And he decided he wanted to give back.
And he made this lovely kit for all of us.
I looked back through the history of him
developing this kit, and it had long gangly arms
and a couple of different versions.
But.
Here we are with the little kit that you can get for
under a hundred bucks.
It's hard to say no to building a robotics project
for under a hundred bucks.
Like the amount of fun you'll get out of this is,
definitely worth it in my opinion.
But we'll see, we still have to build so.
With all these parts cut.
We're ready to, to start assembling,
(upbeat music)
Okay, we've got 8 zeroed servo's moving on.
What we got next.
I do believe that his leg assembly.
Repeat this step.
1, 9.
4 times.
(upbeat music)
- [David] It definitely takes more than an hour
to make this thing.
- Yeah well .
It's what you get for trusting the internet.
(upbeat music)
Okay so we've got.
These four panels made.
We're going to now make the leg assembly.
(upbeat music)
Says don't tighten these, which I don't believe.
You want your servos to be rigid.
So I'm going to keep doing that.
And if the servo fails,
that was my fault.
Moving on.
(upbeat music)
My pliers are now magnetized.
So anytime I try to release this nut into the slot
it needs to go in.
It just comes back out.
Truly the darkest timeline.
(upbeat music)
Oh hell, oh, that was a bear.
We've got four legs.
We're getting there.
What a slug.
Moving on.
Done these guys.
And a random blank page in the manual for some reason.
Body assembly.
There are those pieces I didn't know what they were for.
And oh look that same fastener I hate so much.
(fast upbeat music)
Last night lock, ooh okay.
The number of fasteners fits.
That's a good sign.
So definitely still needs to pivot nicer than that.
(fast upbeat music)
You're getting real close Andy, I can feel it.
I'm getting excited.
I'm starting to actually see it move too.
Which is kind of cool.
(fast upbeat music)
Little spider is almost there, buddy.
I'm at the point where I'm skipping fasteners
that I've struggled with, on the other parts of this build.
'Cause not only do I think I can get away with it,
but also I just don't have the time.
(upbeat music)
Okay.
We've got the battery on.
And.
Second to last page.
We're putting in the ultrasonic sensor.
Which goes,
here.
And then we are ready to power on.
(upbeat music)
These plugs are definitely like bigger than the pitch.
So they're starting to fan in.
And our final port.
That's eight.
Now there's 1s9 on here.
So if you want to add one thing down the line, you can.
After your mePad is fully assembled and all the server MR's
are plugged in.
Watch it, blah, blah, blah, plug-in batteries.
Okay, I have those, conveniently in my pocket.
I'm gonna plug in our batteries.
Now if it lets out the magic smoke.
I did a bad job.
If it works, I did a great job.
It's not good.
I'm not seeing any lights lighten up.
Hm.
Oh, there's a power switch.
Ah.
Alright.
Oh.
It's definitely doing something.
Let's see here.
Walk.
Turn walk.
Two is wave.
It's receiving me.
But it's not doing anything.
The servos are moving.
It's thinking about it.
There we go.
Okay, let's try that again.
So up walk forward.
Nope.
Down.
Left right.
Hm.
You know what, I might've done the joints a little tight.
That's the only thing I can think of.
Think I might be low voltage.
That might be my problem.
Okay.
Start with fresh batteries, that's always rule one.
Which I did not follow.
Dead boys.
Fresh boys, ooh they're still warm.
Very fresh.
Hmm.
Well that's slightly disappointing.
If you have no load on it,
it works just fine.
I tried real hard.
As far as the build goes.
Pretty straight forward.
But.
I wish it worked better right out of the box.
It's trying so hard.
I'll mess around with it a little bit later.
Nonetheless.
Oh.
We got a wave.
A little tinkering,
I think it'd be just fine.
All in all.
Thanks for watching.
Get subscribed to Short Circuit and see you on the next one.