Make This Star Wars BB-8 Droid with a Hacked Sphero | Make:

As an industrial designer, I’ve been particularly fascinated by products that have personality and emotion. And I think the droids in Star Wars have always been really great at capturing a character without facial expression and drawing you in. And BB-8 was no different when they brought it out onstage for the first time.

As I watched it roll around my only thought was “need!” …So I made one.

Part of what I really enjoyed about the process of making it was the timeline. Most projects I work on end up taking weeks, if not months to finish. With BB-8, I pushed myself to make it in a day. As a result, the surfacing and paint is less than perfect, which I’m serendipitously calling “weathered”. But I was able to stick to my goal, and was able to make the whole thing in a matter of hours. I wanted to capture the character and personality of the real robot as simply as possible, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

To make it I used a Sphero 1.0 for the body (I’ve never split open the Sphero 2.0, so I’m not sure if it will work on that model), polyurethane foam surfaced with spackle for the head, and neodymium magnets to connect the two. My file for the head design can be downloaded from Thingiverse.

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu6x9sJCGfo”]

18 Responses to Make This Mini Star Wars BB-8 Ball Droid with a Hacked Sphero

Louis M Johnson Jr on April 19th, 2015 at 11:34 am said:

Nice Job! If you can make the sphero in the base a bit larger (which makes the base larger) using the same internal Magnet arrangement. Then use a second Sphero outside its ball as the head unit. Program the head unit to sense the base unit’s magnet as its Target location and to stay right on that point. Then the head would stay right where it’s supposed to be. You might even be able to use a remote to turn and offset the head from it’s target point as we see in the movie’s droid. :^)
- Zlatan Ibrahimovic on May 8th, 2017 at 8:53 pm said:
  
  As predicted by Make: a few days ago, somebody has made their own bb8.
Ras Pi on April 19th, 2015 at 2:07 pm said:

As predicted by Make: a few days ago, somebody has made their own bb8.
DickCheese on April 19th, 2015 at 9:00 pm said:

shit..
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aphi on April 20th, 2015 at 8:24 am said:

Hi Christian. Give us a ring at tlcsecure.com ! We’re working on something similar with Sphereo 2.0 but instead of a wooden head we will have a plastic one housing a camera. We are looking at the SDK to see if we can stabilize the head and control direction :-) Phil
- ford escape on April 5th, 2017 at 9:33 pm said:
  
  ooks like the *real* BB-8 is a sphero at heart –
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cheinzmann on April 21st, 2015 at 4:21 pm said:

Anyone remember the Sphero Peacekeeper edition?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sphero-peacekeeper-edition
Prop Collector on April 22nd, 2015 at 3:15 pm said:

Join the BB-8 Builder’s club at http://www.bb8builders.com or droidgarage.com
Derek on April 23rd, 2015 at 7:56 am said:

This is kinda funny to me because the company behind Sphero made BB8 and are releasing a toy version anyway. You basically did their exact job. Good work.
woopyzip on April 26th, 2015 at 3:24 pm said:

for more information on how bb8 works see this website:
http://www.roborei.com/world/news/how-does-bb8-work-bb8-starwars-movies/
Everseeker on April 29th, 2015 at 5:47 am said:

In some screenshots you can barely see what look like wheels peeking out from the bottom of the head. I think there’s a set of omniwheels under there, to allow the head to rotate
Everseeker on April 29th, 2015 at 5:50 am said:

Taking that further, If you use balancing software & positioning hardware, I am not at all sure you need the mag link at all.

In fact, Could the top be the ONLY active part? (It always leans over to initiate movement… Could that be because it NEEDS to do that… moving the center of mass past the centroid to cause motion?)

I have seen several algorithms that could handle all of the above nicely. Beginning with an IEEE article a couple years back, there are now a ton of unicycle bots & ball balance bots on youtube…
Jacob Lahue on July 19th, 2015 at 12:16 pm said:

I am so happy you made this because I bought the sphero 1.0 a few years ago and I quickly lost interest with playing with it, because it was slow, and a bunch of other reasons. But when I got my make magazine, I saw you could build one of these, I was like ” I need dis!”. So I turned the pages to find it and then realized its using the Sphero 1.0! The 3 year old toy collecting dust in my closet! I was so happy! Thank you!
Scott Christensen on November 10th, 2015 at 8:16 am said:

I have my Sphero opened up and was wondering if I could just use some squared buckyballs as the magnets with just a little hotglue keeping them in place.
Adopt a pet on July 6th, 2017 at 3:00 pm said:

This would make a great cheap dog toy! My dog would love this.
Bentec Components on November 6th, 2019 at 3:10 am said:

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