James_Seeed shared this 3d printed robot on Thingiverse!
Meet Rapiro. Rapiro is a nice little toy, that comes in a kit. It is, as you’ve guessed, a robot!
The robot itself consists of 12 servos (3 in each arm, 2 in each leg, 1 for the head and 1 for the waist), enabling a wide range of movements. Not-so-wide movements actually, the robots’ limb are very short!
A Raspberry Pi, in the head of the robot, allows
A PiCam, a 5Mpix camera extension to the Raspberry Pi, allows to take pictures, records videos, …
A USB WiFi dongle allows to control the robot completely wirelessly
Fusion PCB service in SeeedStudio(www.seeedstudio.con/fusion.html)I won’t detail how to assemble the Rapiro, neither will I explain how to get your Raspberry Pi setup with a Linux distro since there are plenty of resources on the Internet. The fun part actually starts after you have finished assembling the Rapiro, and when the Raspberry Pi is properly running, allowing you to open a remote SSH connection to start hacking the beast!
The goal is very simple: my Rapiro is able to get Internet connectivity, thanks to its Raspberry Pi and WiFi dongle, so I want to make it controllable remotely. To that effect, I am going to use MQTT, a very lightweight protocol well-suited for Internet of Things communications, to send commands to the robot. Thanks to the PiCam, the robot should also, when asked to do so, take a picture and transmit it. I want to be able to open a browser from wherever in the world, and start controlling my Rapiro (because why not, eh? ), so I will develop a simple web UI to send the actual MQTT commands.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!