When I work on my ship, the only way to interact with my sweet little girl is via whatsapp and my wife that has to aim right the phone. It was fine but since my girl’s going to reach her third birthday, the conversations are beginning to be complicated as my wife has to follow her throught all the house. As a result, I mainly watch the the floors and the walls…
As I already has automated my home throught DIY arduino, ESP8266 and domoticz, I challenge myself with an arduino robot to carry the phone around.
As I didn’t owned a 3D printer, I choose the Mbot Ranger for it’s lego compatibility, its easier block programming system and thought to control it via a web page.
It turns out that the ranger isn’t webcontrol friendly, the lego compatibility led to big ugly’s things, I found the block programming not as open as I wanted and the web page too heavy to control correctly my robot.
2 months later, I have succeed but:
I use an esp8266 to control via serial the ranger with a code based on the xbee protocol
I add a esp8266cam with a pan/tilt to be able to look around
I learn to code an android app to web control on MIT App inventor
I create my own code for the ranger
I bought a 3d resin printer to build some parts and choose water washable resin as it seems less dangerous.
You can find all the details here: