Hey!
So my son got this thing about a year ago:
He played with it for a bit, and that was basically the end. It's a cool little toy, a self-balancing robot that can balance things in it's arms, avoid obstacles, and respond to visual and audio cues.
But, it's sat unused for months and months, and, well... it was made to be hacked, so therefore we shall.
The tear-down:
First, take off the wheels. There are plastic caps over the screws; simply use a small flathead screwdriver, shove it in there as deep as you can, and pry it off - they're glued in. Discard once they're out.
Next, remove the eight screws on the back of the robot...
Then separate the two halves:
Unplug the three plugs that keep the two halves from separating completely. Then, make a hole shown here:
I need to take some additional pictures and update this log. But, order the Pro Mini protopack from Sparkfun, along with the extension cable and headers:
According to Sparkfun, we were to leave the back portion of the battery compartment off and just bolt the protoback to the back of the battery pack. Problem with this is that the battery pack was too loose and gave us some unstable results. Therefore, I cut a hole in the back of the battery pack and fed the harness through it as well, so the pro mini pack just kind of chills on the outside. I'm going to go with a studded battery pack bolt solution to keep the pro mini board secure, but for now loose is fine.
Video... first portion is with the pro mini connected, second portion shows normal operation without the modification.
https://www.facebook.com/gmorrowiv/vide ... 474449964/
Apologies for the non-youtube link for now, I'll fix later.
This is a work in progress; I need to solder a header to the pro mini board so I can actually program the thing. Documentation isn't particularly plentiful on this, so commands and such are a learning experience...
So my son got this thing about a year ago:
He played with it for a bit, and that was basically the end. It's a cool little toy, a self-balancing robot that can balance things in it's arms, avoid obstacles, and respond to visual and audio cues.
But, it's sat unused for months and months, and, well... it was made to be hacked, so therefore we shall.
The tear-down:
First, take off the wheels. There are plastic caps over the screws; simply use a small flathead screwdriver, shove it in there as deep as you can, and pry it off - they're glued in. Discard once they're out.
Next, remove the eight screws on the back of the robot...
Then separate the two halves:
Unplug the three plugs that keep the two halves from separating completely. Then, make a hole shown here:
I need to take some additional pictures and update this log. But, order the Pro Mini protopack from Sparkfun, along with the extension cable and headers:
According to Sparkfun, we were to leave the back portion of the battery compartment off and just bolt the protoback to the back of the battery pack. Problem with this is that the battery pack was too loose and gave us some unstable results. Therefore, I cut a hole in the back of the battery pack and fed the harness through it as well, so the pro mini pack just kind of chills on the outside. I'm going to go with a studded battery pack bolt solution to keep the pro mini board secure, but for now loose is fine.
Video... first portion is with the pro mini connected, second portion shows normal operation without the modification.
https://www.facebook.com/gmorrowiv/vide ... 474449964/
Apologies for the non-youtube link for now, I'll fix later.
This is a work in progress; I need to solder a header to the pro mini board so I can actually program the thing. Documentation isn't particularly plentiful on this, so commands and such are a learning experience...
