Pretty Small Robot

A less ambitious attempt at making a small robot.

It’s not tiny, or micro, but it is pretty small.

Fusion 360 CAD of the Pretty Small Robot. 2 Euro coin for scale.

It measures 31x45x30.5mm(LxWxH)

Tried to keep it as simple as possible. The chassis is 3d printed apart from two bearings that are also required. The general assembly philosophy adopted for this robot was “clips good, glue bad”. So everything just clips or slides into place, including the motors, battery, bearings, and PCB.

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Clips as far as the eye can see
Pretty Small Robot parts

N20 motors clip into place

Then the “bearing holder” piece also clips onto the main chassis

Wheels with bearings on get attached to the bearing holder using a press fit

Wheels go on the N20 Motors

Then rubber bands go on so that each motor can drive two wheels

Then the battery slides into the battery compartment

The PCB has been designed and ordered and will be here in a few weeks so another post will follow when that arrives.

Pretty Small Robot PCB

The PCB is an ESP32-s2 which has usb dfu support so in theory when the board arrives I can just plug in straight in and flash micropython to it.

It also has an smd wifi antenna (just to the left of the car symbol) so I’ll be able to remote control things via wifi if all goes to plan.

I’ve also got a lipo charger built in so it can just drive around till it runs out of battery then plug in the USB-C to charge up and go again.

Step files, Kicad files etc are availabe at https://github.com/wattnotions/PrettySmallRobot

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