/robopanda

Interfacing WowWee RoboPanda

Primary LanguagePythonGNU General Public License v2.0GPL-2.0

Interfacing WowWee RoboPanda

Introduction:

From WowWee's website: Robopanda™ is a playful and talkative interactive friend.

With his engaging personality and bright animated eyes, Robopanda™ loves to share stories and jokes, play games,
sing songs and talk with children of all ages. He’s a fun-filled robotic bear who can even crawl on all fours
and return to a sitting position.  

Designed to work without a remote control, Robopanda™ is controlled directly by touch and sound.

You'll experience hours of delight and entertainment playing with him and his interactive cartridge-based content.

Training mode: Learn how to play with him while he guides you through his many features.

Friend mode: Interact with his many conversations and enjoy his jokes.

Menu mode: Robopanda™ will tell you stories, play games with you and even sing you a song or two!

You can even teach him tricks that he will perform for you.
  - Realistic actions and interactive personality
  - Direct touch sensor and sound control
  - Interactive stories and games
  - Advanced artificial intelligence and awareness
  - Recognizes and talks to his own little toy panda (included)
  - Includes two Activity and Story cartridges
  - Equipped with safety sensors

Purpose:

The WowWee Robopanda is a great "off the shelf" robot for building your own robot.

This repository contains my attempt to control/interface the RoboPanda using various widely available electronic components.

RoboPanda has battery compartments in the legs that hold 3 C batteries each (9v) and a good mix of input and output sensors.
There is also a battery compartment in the back that holds 4 AA batteries (6v).

I/O Type Location
Input Accelerometer Left side
Input Ball switch Back
Input Capacitive touch Hands, Feet, Back, Chest, Back of head
Input Microphone Chest
Input RFID reader Chest
Input Infra-red detector Left eye
Input Potentiometer Hips, Shoulders, Upper arms, Head, Ears, Eye brows (Motor location encoders)
Input Limit switches Eye brows and Ears
Output LED Hands, Eyes, Chest
Output Speaker Chest
Output DC Motor Hips, Shoulders, Upper arms, Head, Ears, Eye brows
Output InfraRed emitter Nose

Main PCB

References:

Raspberry Pi dependencies

sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev python3-dev

Python dependencies

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Arduino firmware

Upload the Standard Firmata example sketch to the Arduino Mega