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BUILDING THE ULTIMATE ROBOTICS KIT

Behold...Spicy Meatbots! The first ever open-source robotics kit designed exclusively for the at-home robot builder. Developing this robotics kit has been like giving birth for us, and we are quaking with pride as we present our precious offspring, a new breed of robot hatchling that the world has ne’er seen before. Click here to see how Spicy Meatbots fits into our Master Plan.

Anatomy of a Spicy Meatbot

THE RECIPE

A Spicy Meatbot has a few KEY ingredients (warning: ¡MUY CALIENTE!). Here’s the secret recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

  • Actobotics structural parts
  • Custom 3D printed parts
  • An Arduino board
  • Cheap, Amazon-able electronics
  • Open-source code libraries

INSTRUCTIONS:

  • See our soon-to-be-released YouTube tutorials for step-by-step guides, all part of our upcoming robotics curriculum called The Robot Underground.

SERVING SIZE:

  • Perfectly portioned for one cool kid who just wants to build robots from the comfort of her own home.


THE ELECTRICAL

The Spicy Meatbots electrical system is built around a glorious Arduino Mega 2560 brain. Add in a couple of Pololu motor drivers to control that motor power. Throw on a 16-channel servo driver if you’re gonna get crazy with the mechanisms. The rest of the system utilizes cheap off-the-shelf electronics, mostly available on Amazon. Worried about that power distribution? We got terminal blocks and voltage converters, baby! We’ve even got motors WITH encoders on the back. We’re not kidding when we say we’ve spent more than a year working on this super spicy electrical system.

  1. These electronics are far cheaper than the electronics for other systems on the market (which are generally designed for competitive teams)

  2. With easy-to-upgrade electronics, your robotics kit will never become obsolete.

  3. If you learn to build robots this way, you will have the skills and flexibility to freestyle with your designs and build robots out of found parts, the ultimate freedom for any robot builder.



CLICK! S P I C Y M E A T B O T - - - - - - - - - - T H E G U T S O F A - - - - - - - - - -


THE CODE

Ah yes, the code. Get ready to dive deep into the exciting world of the C/C++ languages, the native tongue spoken by the Arduino brain. Later on, you’ll move into the Python language when you add a freshly baked Raspberry Pi to the mix. Our resident coder Gretty Spaghetti has spent many-an-hour pulling together code libraries and creating an Eclipse IDE-Git-GitHub workflow worthy of the gods, so that all of the coders in the land can have a smooth experience bringing their Spicy Meatbots to life. As we speak, she’s working on switching the workflow to VSCode, making an easy-to-implement PID algorithm, and bringing in computer vision on a Raspberry Pi!

Start watching our playlist of Spicy Meatbots tutorials below:



COOL. SO CAN I GET MY HANDS ON ONE?

Spicy Meatbots is currently in the development phase, but since it’s open-source, anybody could technically assemble their own kit! (Tutorial coming soon.) If you’re into the idea of becoming a Beta Tester for the system, fill out this form on the “Build With Us” page. :D

Kit Contents