The Junk Robots are Coming! #Mozfest

On the Saturday 28th 2017, Junkbots arrive at Mozfest 2017.

Over the last few years I have been working (off and on) on a project, junkbots (http://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/introduction.html), in which ‘junk’ is used to embed environmental, engineering and computing concepts. One part that has grown from this project is using drinks cans, motor, batteries and something to unbalance the motor to produce a vibrating ‘bot’ that move along a smooth surface.

At Mozilla Festival (or MozFest) with my able assistant (and son) Thomas we will be running a session on turning items such as drinks tins into moving, (partially) controlled ‘bots’ with the addition of pens, vibrating motors and the ‘brain’ a Redfern Electronics Crumble Controller.

What is it?

The junkbot as an idea, in this context, where we can take waste materials combined with some relatively low-cost electronics to build a very simple robot. Cheap (or ideally recovered from an old device) motors, wires, something to unbalance the motor — making it shake, batteries and lots of tape is all that is need to turn a drinks can into a shaking bot. Adding a low cost device such as the Crumble Controller, between the batteries and the motors, allows a bit of control. The Crumble was chosen for three reasons: its price, it comes with free…