This project guides you through building a robot that can wander around your floor. This riffs on John Park's Crickit Carnival Bumper Bot. The difference is that the project progresses through several levels, starting with a very basic bot and adding capabilities.

Parts

Basic Design

You won't need the battery holders if you decide at the end to use a LiPo battery.

1 x Circuit Playground Express
ATSAMD21 based educational board, that's loaded with I/O devices and CircuitPython capable.
1 x CRICKIT for Circuit Playground Express
Robot building addon board.
2 x TT Motor
DC gearbox motor - 200RPM, 3 to 6 vdc
2 x Orange and Clear TT Motor Wheel
Wheels for the TT motor. This is one of the available options which provides good traction.
1 x 4xAA battery holder
Use this if you want to use NiCd batteries.
1 x 3xAA battery holder
Use this if you want to use Alkaline batteries. This is one 3xAA holder. there are others and depending on which you have you may also need the DC Power adapter. This wasn't available at the time this build was done so a different holder was used.
1 x Male DC Power adapter
2.1mm plug to screw terminal block, if your chosen battery pack doesn't have a 2.1mm plug.
1 x 5v power supply
Handy power supply to have while working on a CRICKIT project at your desk, or to power a stationary project.
1 x Cardboard Pop Rivets
Small plastic rivets that are great for joining pieces of cardboard ot other thin things. We'll use them to connect body segments.

With bumpers

3 x Micro switch with lever
Basic level micro switch, 2 terminals
1 x 20 6" F/M Jumper wires
Great to have around, and used here to connect the micro switches to the CRICKIT

Adding an alert buzzer

1 x 5v buzzer
Apply power and it makes a 2KHz tone. The simplest way to make a beep.
1 x Stacking header strip
Female header with extra long pins

A bigger, better power system

If you do this, you'll also need the power adapter and a F/M jumper wire listed above.

1 x 6600mAh 3.7v Lipo Battery
This is a big LiPo battery that works great for power hungry motors.
1 x PowerBoost 1A LiPo recharger and boost
For charging the big LiPo as well as boosting its 3.7v to 5v to power the CircuitPlayground Express and CRICKIT.
1 x SPDT slide switch
Simple slide switch with pins on 0.1" spacing for use with the LiPo boost

Tools and Supplies

  • Corrugated cardboard for chassis, bumpers, body pieces and wheels
  • hot glue gun and glue rods
  • craft knife for cutting cardboard
  • double-sided tape
  • 1 large binder clip to serve as a rear slide for the bit
  • several binder clips to join body pieces together, twice the number of body segments you want
  • thin bamboo skewers
  • colored construction paper and a gluestick if you wish to give your snake bot a little more character

This guide was first published on Jul 30, 2018. It was last updated on Mar 19, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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