Building a silly robot with Grove Starter Kit
I received a Grove Starter kit at an internal work Conference a few months ago. Of course, I did something entirely useless with it, so here is the tutorial on how to make your own useless Marvin.
This is Marvin, and he does the following:
- Complains that he is melting when the temperature is above 30 C°
- Tells you to turn the heater on if the temperature is below 15 C°
- Tells you the temperature when it is between 15 C° and 30 C°
- Swings a pendulum on the touch of the touch sensor
- Lights up when playing the drum
The Grove Starter Kit comes with quite a few components:
Out of these I used the following:
- Seeeduino board (extra to the starter kit)
- Base Shield — goes on top of the Seeeduino to make connections easier for beginners
- Temperature sensor — for Marvin to know the temperature
- Sound sensor — for Marvin to hear the drum
- Touch sensor — To start the pendulum swing
- Servo — To create a pendulum
- LED socket — For marvin to light up on drum beats
- Some lego — to build the body
Hardware setup
You will need to connect the pieces to the following places in order to use the code directly:
The Base Shield would then go on top of the Seeeduino.
Code setup
First you need to download the following two repos as .zip files:
Download the Arduino IDE.
When you open the IDE it will open a new project.
Add the libraries to IDE via Sketch-> Include Library -> Add .ZIP Library
You will see thesetup and loop functions already set up for you at the opening of the IDE. You can fill the setup as follows:
#include "rgb_lcd.h"
#include <Servo.h>rgb_lcd screen;
float temperature;
int thermistor=3975; // Used in the temperature calculations
float resistance; // Used in the temperature calculations
int pendulum_position = 0; // Used in the pendulum swinging
Servo myservo; // Servo tool which swings the pendulumvoid setup()
{
screen.begin(16, 2);
setup_initialization();
myservo.attach(2); delay(5000);
}
Code adding messages to RGB Backlight
The functions that change the colour and message on the RGB Backlight can be created using the following code:
void setup_message(String message, int colorR, int colorG, int
colorB) {
screen.setRGB(colorR, colorG, colorB);
screen.print(message);
}void add_second_line_to_message(String message) {
screen.setCursor(1, 1);
screen.print(message);
}
Code for the starting message
The setup code above sets up the initialization message which is Marvin greeting us. That can be done with the following code:
void setup_initialization() {
String message=" Hi! I'm Marvin."; int colorR = 220;
int colorG = 220;
int colorB = 220; setup_message(message, colorR, colorG, colorB);
}
Code for Marvin’s reactions to temperature
Marvin has three reactions to temperature: Thinking it’s too hot, thinking it’s too cold and being content and telling us the temperature. The messages are printed with the following code:
void setup_too_hot() {
String message="I am melting! :("; int colorR = 255;
int colorG = 0;
int colorB = 0; setup_message(message, colorR, colorG, colorB);
}void setup_too_cold() {
String message="Heater on! D:"; int colorR = 0;
int colorG = 0;
int colorB = 255; setup_message(message, colorR, colorG, colorB);
}void setup_content(int temperature) {
String message=" No complaints";
String second_message = " It's " + (String)temperature +
"C" + (char)223; int colorR = 230;
int colorG = 230;
int colorB = 250; setup_message(message, colorR, colorG, colorB);
add_second_line_to_message(second_message);
}
Code for checking temperature
The temperature sensor does not give the temperature in degrees, and therefore needs to go through a conversion to degrees. The following code is used for Marvin to understand temperature:
float get_temperature() {
int sensor_value=analogRead(A3);
int max_voltage = 1023;
resistance = (float)(max_voltage-sensor_value) *
10000/sensor_value;
temperature = 1/(log(resistance/10000)/thermistor+1/298.15) -
273.15; return temperature;
}void check_temperature() {
temperature = get_temperature();
int touch = digitalRead(A1); screen.clear();
if(temperature > 30) {
setup_too_hot();
} else if(temperature < 15) {
setup_too_cold();
} else if (touch == 0) {
setup_content(temperature);
}
}
Code for pendulum
The pendulum swings 5 times when the touch sensor is touched. This can be achieved with the following code:
void check_touch() {
int sensorValue = digitalRead(A1);
if(sensorValue==1) {
screen.clear();
screen.print(" Tick Tock!");
rotate_pendulum();
}
delay(1000);
}void swing_pendulum() {
for (pendulum_position = 95; pendulum_position <= 135;
pendulum_position += 1) {
myservo.write(pendulum_position);
delay(15);
} for (pendulum_position = 135; pendulum_position >= 95;
pendulum_position -= 1) {
myservo.write(pendulum_position);
delay(15);
}
}void rotate_pendulum() {
for (int times = 0; times <= 5; times += 1) {
swing_pendulum();
}
}
Code for the Drum
When hitting the drum, Marvin should light bu. This is how we make that happen:
void react_to_drumming() {
int a=analogRead(A0);
if(a > 400){
digitalWrite(7, HIGH);
} else {
digitalWrite(7, LOW);
}
}Finally, the loop that brings it all together
We have created all these functions, now we need to bring it all together to make Marvin work.
void loop()
{
screen.setCursor(0, 1); check_temperature();
react_to_drumming(); check_touch();
delay(3000);
}
The Lego
The body is up to you. I just found some random Lego around the house and made what I could from it. One thing that you will need in addition to this is some tape. The tape is to attach a lego piece to the pendulum and for creating the drum (if you so desire).
The final result
This video shows the ridiculous thing that we just made together:
And a video of the drum:
I hope that you enjoyed making your own Marvin.
