Intern’s Corner: Tiny Wanderer from MAKE Volume 29

Robotics Workshop
Intern’s Corner: Tiny Wanderer from MAKE Volume 29

YouTube player

Working at Make: Labs is always fun, especially when you get to test kits before they’re released to the public. As part of MAKE Volume 29 we got to build and test the Tiny Wanderer kit, designed by Doug Paradis and featured in the issue. Inspired by the now-discontinued SERB Robot kit, the Tiny Wanderer uses the ATtiny85 microcontroller for its brain, has two light sensors to detect its environment, and two continuous rotation servos for mobility. Each light sensor consists of an IR (infrared) LED and an IR phototransistor. The main body of the bot is constructed of laser-cut pieces of blue acrylic which are held together with nuts and screws via t-slots. The back of the robot sports a caster wheel made by sandwiching two bearings between pieces of acrylics with bolts running through them and an o-ring acting as the tire. This kit is moderately easy to build and took a total of four hours to put together and program.

To program the Tiny, you plug an Atmel AVRISP programmer into your computer via USB and install the drivers, plug the programmer into the board of the robot, then compile and upload the code using AVR Studio 4. Detailed steps are available on the Tiny Wanderer page of Make: Projects. Doug Paradis also wrote two additional programs for the Tiny Wanderer that allow it to avoid objects and follow a black line. The kit includes brackets for angling the sensors to face forward for object avoidance and he has a bracket design that you can make yourself for line-following. The brains of the bot can be replaced by an Arduino UNO (or older versions) and there are mounting holes for that on the chassis.

We decided to tape a marker on the back of our robot to see what kind of path it would trace when running the edge detection program. After about 10 minutes, the Tiny Wanderer fell off of the table.. Gahh! Wh-where is that time machine?!

Watch the video to see the path it traced. It was quite interesting to see it retracing the same path several times. We suggest running this little bot on a surface that’s closer to the ground (about two inches) to prevent major injuries to it. After replacing the broken parts, we ran Tiny on a lower platform for two hours straight and it never fell. It must have been camera-shy in its first run.

Get your Tiny Wanderer Complete Kit or the Parts Pack from the Maker Shed!

More:
See all of the high-tech hi-jinx from the Make: Lab interns

6 thoughts on “Intern’s Corner: Tiny Wanderer from MAKE Volume 29

  1. Rob0 says:

    Watch it’s movements before it fell off the table It came in at a very shallow angle, the detector sensed it was close to the edge and it switched into pivot mode. However it was too close to the edge so tge pivot caused it’s left wheel to go off the edge and then to fall. This will happen again if it approaches the edge at a shallow enough angle (you can test that). There are possible solutions (more sensors, different programming) I found this out myself while making sumo bots.

  2. Dave says:

    Eric – where can I buy a bunch of those bumpers?

    1. Eric Chu says:

      The bumpers are not sold anywhere right now, but you should keep an eye out on the SHED. ;)

Comments are closed.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK