Review
(^186) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
Build your
own Robot
Rover for
Raspberry Pi
- just add
Raspberry Pi
and batteries
Monk Makes
Maker
Sayse always appreciate the
kits from Monk Makes.
They’re functional, come
with great documentation, and
most importantly are always a
good-value price. The RasPiRobot
board that you can currently
buy impressed us a little while
ago, so it’s nice to see a kit that
uses it for a Pi robot in the way
Simon Monk intended.
This particular robot kit is two
kits in one. As well as being able
to create a basic robot that you
can program, you have access to
a push-button and the RaspberrySquid RGB LED. These work on
the RasPiRobot board without
it needing to be built as a robot;
however, it does also mean you can
attach them once the robot is built.
It’s an interesting concept, as in
theory you can use the button and
LED as a ‘getting started with GPIO
programming’ step and then move
onto building the robot and doing
even more.
As for the robot build itself,
the process is nice and easy. The
chassis is made up of one piece of
laser-cut acrylic and it uses two
motors to drive it. A caster wheelis attached to the rear so it can
pootle about, and the battery pack
can be attached to the underside.
The Pi is merely stuck to the
surface using some Blu Tack or
double-sided tape and the rest
of the components slot neatly
into the motor controller which
attaches on top of the Pi. It’s
very simple and there’s a couple
of video guides from Simon that
show you how to do it, although
it would be nice to have a step-
by-step visual guide as well. It
took us an episode of the original
Star Trek to build, so under anA kit that includes more than just a robot,
how well does it work for teaching youngsters about coding?W
GOPIGO
The GoPiGo
is another
fairly simple-
looking robot
kit. However,
it too can be
programmed
to do a lot of
robotics tasks.magpi.cc/2hA8f6iRelated
£95 / $99
RASPIROBOT ROVER KIT
RASPIROBOT
ROVER KIT