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ROBOTICS
26 GUIDES | 182 PAGES | 1 FEATURED | 1 POPULAR
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Unicorn Hat with Moving Ears
Really simple robotics and lights bring this mythical creature to life
by Erin St Blaine
Connect Circuit Playground to two mini servos and make unicorn ears that move! Control them with a mini joystick hidden in your pocket. Use Circuit Playground's onboard neopixels to add a glowing rainbow horn, and you're ready to ride out with the fairies.
NEW
My Mini Race Car
Bluetooth controlled, temperature sensing Formula E racer!
by John Park
Zooooom! Now you can build and drive your own Mini Race Car using the Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE microcontroller. Keep an eye on racetrack telemetry with the included HTU21D-F temperature & humidity sensor breakout board.
CurieBot: Arduino 101 Mini Robot Rover
The powerful, 32-bit, Bluetooth enabled, three-layer robot of the future!
by John Park
Build your own mini robot with the Arduino 101 board. This smart little 'bot contains a 32-bit Intel Curie module, Bluetooth LE capabilities, and a 6-axis accelerometer/gyro! Drive it with your phone, or turn over the controls to this capable robot's own decision making!!
AdaBox 002
Explore and use the contents of your AdaBox 002
by Tyler Cooper
With AdaBox 002, we are bringing you the fun and versatility of a small robot. Learn how to control your new robot friend with a phone and make it sing custom tunes. Learn how to make your new robot more intelligent and independent too!
Wizzy: A Needle Felted Cat
Create animatronic animals with attitude.
by Rick Winscot
Transform a handful of electronics into a fun, fuzzy, and fabulous needle felted animal.
Adafruit DRV8833 DC/Stepper Motor Driver Breakout Board
Chopper it up with current limiting motor control
by lady ada
Spin two DC motors or step one bi-polar or uni-polar stepper with up to 1.2A per channel using the DRV8833. This motor driver chip is a nice alternative to the TB6612 driver. Like that chip, you get 2 full H-bridges, but this chip is better for low voltage uses (can run from 2.7V up to 10.8V motor power) and has built in current limiting capability. We set it up for 1A current limiting so you don't get more than 2A per chip, but you can also disable the current limiting, or change it to a different limit!
Current Limiting Stepper Driver with DRV8871
Got big motors to drive? Call in the choppers!
by Bill Earl
This tutorial shows how to combine 2 DRV8871 motor drivers to create a high-performance "Chopper" style stepper driver. The current limiting feature of this H-bridge chip allows you to drive bigger motors, or squeeze more performance from your existing motors.
Adafruit Stepper + DC Motor FeatherWing
Make your feather motorized
by lady ada
A Feather board without ambition is a Feather board without FeatherWings! This is the DC Motor + Stepper FeatherWing which will let you use 2 x bi-polar stepper motors or 4 x brushed DC motors (or 1 stepper and 2 DC motors). Since the FeatherWing only uses the I2C (SDA & SCL pins), it works with any and all Feathers- ATmega32u4, ATSAM M0 or ESP8266-based. You can stack it with any other FeatherWing or with itself (just make sure you have each wing with a unique I2C address)
Build an ESP8266 Mobile Robot
Learn how to make a mobile robot that you can easily control via WiFi!
by M. Schwartz
In this guide, you will learn how to build your own mobile robot based on the ESP8266 WiFi chip. You will then be able to control the robot via WiFi, right from a nice interface on your computer!
Adafruit DRV8871 Brushed DC Motor Driver Breakout
Up to 45V and 3.6A of motor control
by lady ada
Crank up your robotics with powerful Adafruit DRV8871 motor driver breakout board. This motor driver has a lot of great specs that make it useful for a wide variety of mechatronics. In particular, the simple resistor-set current limiting and auto-magic PWM support make it super easy to use.
Adafruit 8-Channel PWM or Servo FeatherWing
A 8 x servo party for your Feather!
by lady ada
You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. What now? You could give up OR you could just get our handy PWM and Servo FeatherWing. It's a lot like our popular PWM/Servo Shield but with half the channels & squished into a nice small portable size and works with any of our Feather boards.
Bringing Characters to Life
More than just code and wires.
by Phillip Burgess
Whether robots, animatronics or purely onscreen avatars, how your creation looks and moves will make or break an emotional connection with your audience. Will they regard it as believable and “alive,” or a dull and obvious assemblage of mechanisms and software?
Simple Raspberry Pi Robot
Build a simple moving robot with a Raspberry Pi and Adafruit's excellent robot platform!
by Tony DiCola
Use a Raspberry Pi and Adafruit Motor HAT to control two DC motors that move a simple robot around using Python code. This is a great base for starting with a Pi robot project!
Bluefruit LE Feather Robot Rover
Control this tiny 2-wheel drive robot with your phone!
by James DeVito
Use a Feather with Bluetooth LE and a Motor Featherwing to kit out a little red rover. Drive it around wirelessly with Bluefruit LE Connect's control pad, or even your phone's accelerometer!
Mini Pan-Tilt Kit Assembly
What to do with that bag of parts.
by Bill Earl
This step-by-step guide to assembling the Mini Pan-Tilt kit will have you panning and tilting in just a few short minutes.
Open Sesame! A SMS-controlled door lock
Create your own SMS-controlled door lock
by lady ada
Wouldn't it be cool if, instead of having to give your dog-sitter a key to your place, you could just text your home to let her in? Now we build it ourselves using the new Lockitron body, Metro Mini (tiny Arduino-compatible) and a FONA 800 cellular module. Normally, a Lockitron has a built-in WiFi system for locking & unlocking via their App. Since they have redesigned their enclosure, we now have the 'guts' of the Lockitron available for hacking. There's just enough space inside for some tasty Adafruit electronics
Calibrating Sensors
Get peak performance from all your sensors.
by Bill Earl
Most modern sensors perform quite well right out-of-the box. But the sensor is only part of the measurement system. For best accuracy in critical applications, you will want to calibrate.
Adafruit TB6612 1.2A DC/Stepper Motor Driver Breakout Board
H-Bridge it up
by lady ada
Fire four solenoids, spin two DC motors or step one bi-polar or uni-polar stepper with 1.2A per channel (3A peak) using the TB6612. These are perhaps better known as "the drivers in our assembled Adafruit Motorshield or Motor HAT." We really like these dual H-bridges, so if you want to control motors without a shield or HAT these are easy to include on any solderless breadboard or perma-proto.
Adafruit DC and Stepper Motor HAT for Raspberry Pi
Stackable Steppers and DC motor control for your Raspberry Pi
by lady ada
Let your robotic dreams come true with the new DC+Stepper Motor HAT from Adafruit. This Raspberry Pi add-on is perfect for any motion project as it can drive up to 4 DC or 2 Stepper motors with full PWM speed control.
Adafruit 16-Channel PWM/Servo HAT for Raspberry Pi
16 channels of servo-bustin' power for your Pi
by lady ada
The Raspberry Pi is a wonderful little computer, but one thing it isn't very good at is controlling DC Servo Motors - these motors need very specific and repetitive timing pulses to set the position. Instead of asking the Pi Linux kernel to send these signals, pop on this handy HAT! It adds the capability to control 16 Servos with perfect timing. It can also do PWM up to 1.6 KHz with 12 bit precision, all completely free-running.
Servo Animatronic Tail
Why wiggle when you can wag?
by Rick Winscot
Add a touch of awesome to your interactive displays, costumes, or art projects with an animatronic tail comprised of 3D printed parts, a silicon tube, a servo, and minimal hardware.
Pixy Pet Robot - Color vision follower
A frisky little friend you can build in an afternoon!
by Bill Earl
This project pairs the super-awsome Pixy CMUCam-5 vision system with the high performance Zumo robot platform. Combining the powerful object tracking capabilities of the Pixy camera with the nimble Zumo robot base, you can create a responsive little bot that will chase balls and follow you around like a pet!
3D Printed Adabot Figurine
Make your own Adabot Toy!
by Ruiz Brothers
Customize the electronics inside your own Adabot pose-able figurine. A great friend to all engineers and engineers-to-be!
FEATURED
Adafruit Motor Selection Guide
Choose the right motor (and controller) for the job!
by Bill Earl
There are many types of motors. Big ones, small ones, fast ones, strong ones. Whether you need brute strength, blinding speed or delicate precision movement, there is a motor designed for the task. This guide will help you find to the right motor for your project.
Line Following Zumo Robot Using Simulink
Program your Zumo Robot to follow lines using PID control
by Anuja Apte
This tutorial describes how you can use Simulink to program a PID controller which would enable a Zumo robot to follow lines on the basis of data received from the reflectance sensors.