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If you're here, it's because you were given the gift of electronics with an AdaBox! You are a beginner who is getting started with your AdaBox or you just want to relive what it's like being a beginner at electronics again. But most of all, you want to learn how to build and make stuff with electronics! (If, rather than learn electronics, you'd like to look at pictures of cats instead, please check https://www.adafruit.com/galleries/cats-of-engineering)

And, you're in luck: there's never been a better time.

Gone are the days where you need thousands of dollars of equipment and lots physics/math background. Nowadays, if you want to learn to work with electronics, you can jump right in for $100 or less, and any sort of computer. And we're talking about learning a lot of electronics and robotics - from the basics of moving a servo, to making a mini golf course! With a good pack of parts, you can build a base of knowledge that will take you from your first blinking LED to someone who can make the creative interactive robots of their dreams!

Who is this for?

Anyone who is interested in learning how to program, build robot friends and access to a modern web browser. That's pretty much the minimum. Remember, this guide is specifically for people who have purchased or received an AdaBox subscription!

You don't need to know a lot of physics or math, and just like an Art Degree isn't required for making art and being creative, you don't need to have a computer science or mechanical engineering degree. It helps if you're comfortable using computers but that's a skill most people pick up through life.

If you know how to program already - great! If not, don't worry, we'll teach you enough to be dangerous.

Who isn't this for?

While you can follow along without an AdaBox, it will not make as much sense unless you have all of the components and more which either came as a gift or purchased yourself - remember, the goal is helping beginners!

If you're an expert, please visit our hundreds other tutorials and jump right in at learn.adafruit.com

Who are you?

Great question. This is me:

I'm Ladyada, and I love to teach people how to build stuff and how they can be creative with technology.

So, are you ready?

Let's do this thing!

Want to buy past AdaBoxes?

This AdaBox is a pretty special one, it's the first box where we're introducing a new robotics platform and also (hopefully!) a new way to think about robotics.

Having an AdaBox dedicated to robotics (not just a single robot rover like we did in AdaBox 002) is a bit of a change. Yes, we've got tons of fun projects that you can build 'out of the box' but we're hoping we can present you with more than just parts and tutorials.

This AdaBox is meant to be an inspiration to us humanoids - to Make Robot Friend not robot enemy or robot slave.

For those who are curious, or perhaps a little bored, I thought I'd write down a Crickit Manifesto - where and why and how this Adabox came to be!

The Octo Box

When we first sat down at a tasty dim sum lunch to discuss this adabox we wrote down the number of the box 8 !  Now, box #7 was pretty easy to figure out, with the number 007 it was clearly going to be spy themed. But 008 isn't as obvious. What would it be about?

8 stands for octopus, magic 8 balls, and octagons.

We thought about some projects that had to do with 8, and started drawing a lot of octagons on a piece of paper...

Flashback to 2 months earlier...

Sometime around February, we'd been thinking about little robots. We had a robot chassis in the store and even designed ADABOX 002 to come with a full kit that included a Feather Bluefruit for wireless control. But I'd been thinking about having a sensor-bot in the shop, you know something that could do line-following or light sensing. I was also thinking about having it be able to draw with a marker. I'd started sketching out a design in EagleCAD PCB software!

Since I had this robot thought out, it seemed like a good candidate for something to ship with ADABOX! It would be a fun scribbling robot, maybe have programmability in CircuitPython or MakeCode.

Heck, we could even make the PCB an octagon, to keep it thematic!

Art bot + Octagon = sounds like we're done!

Well, maybe?

We starting chatting with friends (like the wonderful Carol Willing), asking them what they thought about robotics. What we kept hearing, and agreed with, is that robotics is overwhelmed with "rolling rovers": two or maybe 4-wheeled robots that have some sensors attached to them. They often do some basic sensor -> motion algorithms like "line following" or "wall avoidance"

These robots are popular, but we had this nagging feeling that basically every company or maker who wanted to 'do robotics' would take that basic idea, and make their own version. The innovation was in the chassis, maybe microcontroller chip, power supply or sensor assortment. But the basic design was pretty much the same. It's a well-traveled robot road.

Personally, though?

My own personal view? I never really liked rovers that much. I'd build them, maybe run them around the room then get bored. It wasn't the hardware design or the software or programming language. I just never really took a shine to things that roll around.

I always sort of felt like "OK now I've built this robot and it moves. Now what?" There was never any creative endeavor or way to improve upon the robot. There were Things It Could Do and you'd dutifully complete those projects and follow that line. And... that's it.

I'm sure that Adafruit could design a totally awesome rover. It would be cute, work well, be easy to program. All that good stuff. But it wouldn't be something that could inspire.

That's to say: if someone was already interested in building a rover, I'm sure they'd like ours. But it wouldn't get someone who was not already interested to be inspired to build robots.

So. Back to the drawing board.

The Ladyada Robotic Backstory

I started thinking back...a long way back. To when I was in school! Back when I was an undergrad, I had participated in the MIT 6.270 competition during 2001 January IAP (winter break). My teammates (Amittai & w0z) and I built the g0thb0t - a decidedly g0th LEGO robot.

The robot body was made from LEGO, with 'standard' DC motors that would be built into a fully-LEGO gearbox. There were a few basic sensors like a light sensor, bump sensors, distance sensor, one servo and a ton of LEGO pieces (full contents list here).

The thing I remember most about the 6.270 competition (besides the sponsor/recruiters shooting a T-shirt cannon into the 26-100 seating, hitting our bot with a wadded up shirt and knocking it off the desk) was how incredibly tedious the whole process was.

This is not the 6.270 organizers' or designers' fault - they did the very best they could with the technology available.

But it was just so awful to build a robot. And hard! It was so incredibly hard that if your robot could not break during the competition rounds, it would probably win!

We spent most of our time building a lead-acid power supply, building a gear box, learning CVS, calibrating motors. Calibrating sensors. Downloading sparse C code onto Handy Boards. We're talking at least 20 hours of trained-by-MIT-best-of-the-best-engineering-student-work before you could even think about what your robot would do or how it would look.

The Handy Board

Despite not having a great time building this robot, the Handy Board was an interesting development board. It had a Motorolla MC68HC11 microcontroller, 4 DC motor controllers, IR input, analog inputs, servo outputs, etc.

You can read the full manual here:

This idea of an all-in-one robot controller stuck with me, so I decided to research more about it now 17 years later. The Handy Board website is still up if you're interested in reading about the design and I found that a year after I'd done 6.270 the Handy Board had a little sister - the Handy Cricket.

The Handy Cricket

According to the website:

• The Cricket is a tiny computer, that you can program using Logo.
• You can control motors and lights with the Cricket.
• The Cricket can receive information from sensors, like touch sensors and light sensors.
• Crickets can “talk” to each other, sending messages with infrared (IR) light.
• People have used Crickets to build little robots, animated rocking horses, automatic gift boxes, and other personal animated toys.

What's neat to see is how the Handy Board (a powerful robot controller) turned into the Cricket, something for "little robots, animated rocking horses, automatic gift boxes, and other personal animated toys."

In fact, lots of people wanted to make projects like those and not just rovers. The Handy Cricket would become the PICO Cricket, a plug-and-play animatronics/robotics platform

The PICO Cricket

Luckily by this time we not only had digital cameras, but YouTube! So you can see a video of the kinds of projects kids were building with PICO Cricket here:

OK so now we're three generations down, from the Handy Board to the Handy Cricket to the PICO Cricket.

The story doesn't end there for this lineage, the PICO Cricket design would eventually become LEGO Mindstorms and LEGO WeDo so if you're wondering why LEGO robotics seems so similar to the Handy designs, that's why!

But this is where we get off the Handy train, because while I was interested & excited to read about the Handy Cricket / PICO Cricket and the creative and crafty robots that they inspired kids to make... "little robots, animated rocking horses, automatic gift boxes, and other personal animated toys"... the LEGO Mindstorms robots departed from that kind of animatronics, and shifting more towards the 6.270-style robot rovers and mechatronics.

And, lets be honest, those LEGO robot sets are expensive! The expense is for a good reason, the LEGO robotics parts are durable and very well made. But, still, I wanted something that we could ship in an Adabox!

Oh Right! Adabox!

You thought I'd forgotten, but no...this was still all about Adabox 008!

By this time we were thinking "Man, maybe a little octogon-bot isn't what we should make. Why re-make the same rover bot everyone else had so many times over?" and all that Handy/Cricket research kind of inspired us.

We wanted to make a robotic platform for building artistic and creative robots. Sure you could build a rover if you wanted to, but lets make it easy to add NeoPixels and sound too!

So we went back to our drawings of octagons.

DigiKey at Our Side!

As we started to come up with what we'd want to put in the AdaBox - Circuit Playground Express, Crickit, servos, motors, wheels, and tons of parts - we quickly realized we needed some help from a partner to get all those Crickits made and shipped.

So, Why Did We Design Crickit?

One of the things I really liked about the Handy Crickit / PICO Crickit is that it didn't do everything - it couldn't control a hexapod walker, or a 4WD tank bot. It didn't have optical encoder support, or line following sensors. It had limitations, but those limitations pushed one to be creative.

We wanted to make our board affordable and broad.

• Affordable so people felt comfortable making something and maybe it wouldn't work the first time - hey that's ok if its under $50!
• Broad in that it does a little bit of a lot of things. Do some robots need 8 servos? Sure, but those robots aren't the ones you can build with Crickit.

Bento image from Wikipedia

By integrating all those capabilites together, we can unlock projects that are Creative and Interactive Robots. Thus the (bacronym) name - CRICKIT for Creative Robot and Interactive Construction KIT. It's a clear nod to the Handy Cricket, but a slight twist on the name so they won't get confused.

Creative and Interactive Robotics

We really mean it when we say Creative and Interactive! Once we started designing Crickit we wanted to make weird, creative, interesting and funny interactive robot projects.

Like this Bubble Blowing robot, that moved a servo with a bubble wand attached, and then turns on a DC motor to blow a stream of bubbles

Or a full animatronic interpretation of an SNL skit with servos, NeoPixels, audio effects and even a fog machine - all controlled by Crickit and CircuitPython

Note, not all these parts are in your Adabox - they're inspirations to show you what a robot friend can be!

Simplify Programming with MakeCode & CircuitPython

We made sure you could design your interactive robot in MakeCode, by dragging-and-dropping blocks, for beginners who are just starting out learning to code.

We also have the Crickit programmable in CircuitPython. In particular we wanted to make sure that the long "edit, compile, upload, debug" loop that haunts C programming would not be an impediment.

With robotics, there's a lot of times you need to tweak values, sensors, calibrations...you may need to make 15 small changes to get the smooth motion and range of servos, or to make sure the sound triggers at the right time.

Doing that in CircuitPython is really nice because you can just save and it will automatically reload. It takes only 5 minutes to do what in Arduino would take an hour!

Go Forth and Make Robot Friend!

This Adabox has a ton of projects that we've built and you can follow along. But we also hope to inspire you to make your own unusual, strange, creative, and fun animatronic projects. You don't need to make a rolling rover (although we do have a fun cardboard bumper bot!).

Our projects focus on recycling cardboard, paper, office supplies, maybe some stuff out of your recycling bin like plastic cups and toilet-paper roll cores. You don't need to spend hundreds of $ to make a robot! Make a project, then if you want to try something else you can just remove the Crickit and wire it up to something else.

Look around your home, find something you can recycle, craft and create. Make it move, sing, light up – then post it up to share with the world with our hashtag..

#MakeRobotFriend

Sometimes we wonder if robotics engineers ever watch movies. If they did, they'd know that making robots into slaves always ends up in a robot rebellion. Why even go down that path? Here at Adafruit we believe in making robots our friends!

This ADABOX is based around CRICKIT a Creative Robotics and Interactive Creations tool KIT. When paired with motors, servos, a Circuit Playground Express and your own creativity, you'll be able to craft your very own Robot Friend!

AdaBox 008 Contents

Bonus Extras for Subscribers!

Projects

Now that we've seen all the terrific stuff that's inside, let's start making things!

Now that we've taken a look at all the great stuff inside AdaBox 008, let's start using it! We packed this AdaBox 008 guide chock full of so much stuff that we decided to write this "Guide to the Guides" to help you navigate it all! Just click on the links on the left hand side of this page to get around.

Project Sections

Then, once you're ready, the fun really gets going in the AdaBox 008 Projects sections!

You'll start off in the First Projects section, to begin making awesome projects using Crickit & Circuit Playground Express coded with MakeCode, and involving some of your new cardboard construction skills!

Next, you can take your coding to the next level using CircuitPython to program the Crickit and Circuit Playground Express in the Intermediate Projects section. Of course, as your skills grow you can go off of the beaten path and build projects of your own devising -- these guides are here to teach and inspire you so that you can make your own original creations!!

When you like, you can move into the Advanced Projects section. These projects will involve coding in either MakeCode or CircuitPython and will involve some increasingly involved building techniques to flex your fiberboard fabrication chops!

Now it's time to build! Head into the First Projects, Intermediate Projects, and Adavanced Projects sections to get experience building a variety of creative robotics projects with Crickit!

The projects in this section are perfect starting projects for you to begin making your initial forays into Crickit-based creative robotics! They use MakeCode as the programming platform, with it's excellent graphical block-based interface.

These intermediate level projects will get you going with CircuitPython on Crickit!

The guides in this Advanced Projects section use a mix of MakeCode and CircuitPython, and involve more elaborate builds.

We hope this AdaBox serves as a launching off point for your explorations into robotics and cardboard/junkbot project invention! Here are some inspiring projects that people have created to get your creative circuits buzzing!

Cardboard Crafting & Creations

We here at Adafruit have posted many, many stories about cardboard related creations over the years! Check them out here.

More Projects!

Here are two more Crickit projects that require a few extra parts, but are excellent next steps to try!

• Living Starry Night Painting
• Animatronic Hand

Here are some amazing, advanced cardboard and junkbot projects:

• Cardboard Spider DIY Quadruped

• Simple Bots

• Hummingbird Cardboard Projects

• Mini Gear Cardboard Projects

• The Q's cardboard creations

• SKM cardboard DIY