This project was inspired by “scary” killer robots seen in cheesy 1980’s sci-fi horror movies. In order to make the project more authentic, I started with the ultra-intimidating 6502 based Apple IIe.
I started by pulling out the power supply and making a circuit that could provide 5v, -5v, 12v, and -12v from a battery and created a motor control board. The motor control board runs on an ATmega368 connected to the Apple IIe through its joystick port and includes an Emic 2 voice synthesis module.
At the top is a 3D printed sword controlled by a simple servo motor. Code running on the Apple IIe is written in Apple BASIC and sends commands to the motor control board by bit-banging data over 2 output wires from the joystick port.
There are alot of design details like which includes how to power the 4 voltages the computer needs via one large LiPo battery.
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