Scribble Bots
8th June, 2009
Inspired by a post we saw on the MAKE: blog, we decided to make our own vibrating robots with Newtons Walk school…
We’ve been looking for an excuse to get stuck into some electronics with a group for a long time - we do a lot of circuit mashing at home - and as they had all just watched Wallee we thought this would be the perfect time.
Soldering in school wasn’t an option so we just used terminal strip to hold the motor, LED and battery clip together. The weight on the end of the motor was a piece of wooden dowel drilled off centre - all easy for the pupils to assemble themselves with a screw little driver. After a busy morning of designing, making, building, wiring, and gluing, we all put our bots to the test in the drawing arena!
If you want to try this yourself use superbright red or yellow LEDs. There isn’t enough juice in 2 batteries to push the motor and blue or white LEDs too. Pupils used whatever they could lay their hands on from our big-plastic-junk-box, and we encouraged them to try different designs to see what worked - shifting the weight and balance, adding legs or ripping them off. It was a lot of fun!
QUAD employ us to work at Newtons Walk. Keep your eyes peeled for more Newtons Walk posts, and an upcoming exhibition at QUAD in July!
Inspired by a post we saw on the MAKE: blog, we decided to make our own vibrating robots with Newtons Walk school…
We’ve been looking for an excuse to get stuck into some electronics with a group for a long time - we do a lot of circuit mashing at home - and as they had all just watched Wallee we thought this would be the perfect time.
Soldering in school wasn’t an option so we just used terminal strip to hold the motor, LED and battery clip together. The weight on the end of the motor was a piece of wooden dowel drilled off centre - all easy for the pupils to assemble themselves with a screw little driver. After a busy morning of designing, making, building, wiring, and gluing, we all put our bots to the test in the drawing arena!
If you want to try this yourself use superbright red or yellow LEDs. There isn’t enough juice in 2 batteries to push the motor and blue or white LEDs too. Pupils used whatever they could lay their hands on from our big-plastic-junk-box, and we encouraged them to try different designs to see what worked - shifting the weight and balance, adding legs or ripping them off. It was a lot of fun!
QUAD employ us to work at Newtons Walk. Keep your eyes peeled for more Newtons Walk posts, and an upcoming exhibition at QUAD in July!
