Skip to content

Home

Jump to bottom
Tim Harvey edited this page Aug 21, 2016 · 15 revisions

Welcome to the BlocklyBot wiki!

(This page is still under construction - Images/Videos coming soon!)

BlocklyBot is an afterschool program designed for 5th and 6th grade students. The object of the course is to construct a 'Mobbob' Robot that can be programmed via the 'BlocklyBot' Android application.

The course is setup in the following sessions (one day a week, 1 to 2 hours each):

  1. Introduction to the Mobbob Robot and Administrative details
  2. Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) project using Tinkercad to design a phone holder/clip for the robot that fits the students phone
  3. 3D Printing fundamentals and using an FDM printer to print the phone holder/clip that the student designed previously
  4. Servo motor fundamentals and using 4 servos (2 hips and 2 feet) to instruct a biped robot to move forward/backward and turn right/left
  5. Assembly of the servo motors and 3D printed parts to construct the robot
  6. Following a wiring diagram and soldering wires to the micro controller
  7. Basic programming with Blockly
  8. Advanced programming with Blockly

The bill of materials for the robot is less than $30:

  • $4 - Arduino Nano Micro-controller
  • $5 - HC-05 Bluetooth Master/Slave serial board
  • $10 - 5V 1A 2200mAH USB rechargeable battery
  • $8 - 4x 9G servos

An Android phone or tablet is required from the student for controlling the robot. The advantage of using a phone is that it can be mounted as the head/face of the robot vs a tablet which would likely be too heavy and large for the same purpose. However, the student can still use a phone or tablet detached from the robot. The phone must support Bluetooth 2.0 (Bluetooth 4.0 if using a DFROBOT Bluno Beetle micro-controller). In the future the BlocklyBot application will most likely be enhanced to provide programming blocks that take advantage of the phones microphone, speaker, and front facing camera if available however these are not required to perform basic movement. An 'unlocked' (meaning no data plan) phone/tablet with wifi/bluetooth can be easily purchased from standard retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, Bestbuy, or Walmart among others for as little as $30. A word of warning though... you do get what you pay for.

A bluetooth 2.0 micro-controller solution comprised of a Arduino Nano plus an HC-05 bluetooth 2.0 controller was chosen in order to keep the requirements of the phone/tablet to a minimum spec. A cleaner solution (but adding another $10 in cost) is to use a more integrated micro-controller such as the DFROBOT Bluno Beetle featuring an smaller form-factor Arduino with an integrated Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE) controller which makes for a smaller footprint, less hardware complexity, and less wiring.

Clone this wiki locally