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