Carebot Robot
- Material List
- Safety First
- Circuit Basics
- Two wire
- Three wire
- Four wire
- Components Checklist
- Robot Components
- Full Robot: Otto
- Arduino Nano
- Nano shield
- Buzzer
- Servos
- Matrix
- Initial Exploration and Part Identification
- Component Match
- Part location Identification
- Inside the robot
- Body Components
- Head Components
- Let’s connect!
- Arduino Nano and Shield
- Buzzer to Shield
- Servo to Shield
- LED Matrix to Shield
- Optional: Adding Servo for Arms
In this workshop you will level up your tech skills by building the "brain" and body of an Otto robot from the ground up. You’ll get hands-on with pro-level components like nanoboards and servo motors, wiring everything together before jumping into the software to make it move. This workshop hits key STEAM skills in hardware engineering and systems thinking, giving you a real-world look at how robotics actually works
Material List
Safety First
Before we get started let’s cover some basic safety tips!
Power should never be connected to components while assembling.
Keep water away from workstation at all times.
Don’t use force to connect parts. Need help? Ask!
Circuit Basics
Two wire
All batteries have two sides: positive and negative
- Positive (+) / VCC: The electricity travels "out" from the battery to the component.
- Negative (-) / GND: The electricity travels "back" to the battery to complete the circle.
Components like LEDs need to be attached to both negative and positive to work.
Though some components like LEDs and buzzers care what leg is touching positive vs negative.
Three wire
Most parts on your Otto (like the servos) use a three-wire system to stay organized
- Positive (+) / VCC: The electricity travels "out" from the battery to the component.
- Negative (-) / GND: The electricity travels "back" to the battery to complete the circle.
- Signal: This is the "Message" from the Nano telling the part what to do.
Four wire
At times we will have four-wire components (like LED Matrix) if they have a more complex job. With that they will need to keep track of timing (like counting steps on the dance floor).
- Positive (+) / VCC: The electricity travels "out" from the battery to the component.
- Negative (-) / GND: The electricity travels "back" to the battery to complete the circle.
- Signal: This is the "Message" from the Nano telling the part what to do.
- Clock: defines the timing of the data transfer
Components Checklist
Before you start building, make sure you have all the parts ready and we know a bit more about what we are using.
You should have:
- Otto Robot
- 4 servos
- piezo buzzer & two F-F wires
- Arduino Nano
- Nano Shield
- 8 x 16 LED matrix
So what are these components that make up our robot anyways?
Let’s find out!
Robot Components
Full Robot: Otto
Otto is a 3D-printed robot that uses your Arduino Nano, shield, servos, and LED matrix to "come to life" with movement and personality. By combining these parts, you'll be able to program your robot to walk, dance, and even show facial expressions.
Following parts make up the main components inside our robot!
Arduino Nano
The Arduino Nano is a tiny, powerful "brain" for electronics that can control gadgets like robots, alarms, and light displays.
Nano shield
The Arduino Nano Shield is an expansion board that acts like a "power strip" for your Nano, providing extra pins to easily plug in multiple sensors and motors at once. It eliminates messy wiring by giving each connection its own dedicated spot, making it much simpler to build complex projects quickly.
Take a look at the left side of the Shield. You will see a row of numbers from 0-13 each with 3 pins. Those pins give each number row a dedicated G, V, S. G = Ground (battery Negative) V = Voltage (battery Positive) S = signal (line that receives instructions)
Buzzer
A piezo buzzer is a small electronic component that creates beeps, tones, and even simple melodies by vibrating very quickly when it receives electricity. By connecting it to your Nano Shield, you can program it to act as an alarm, a musical instrument, or a "click" sound for your gadgets.
Servos
A servo is a special type of motor that can turn to a specific angle (like 90° or 180°) rather than just spinning in circles. When used with a Nano Shield, you can simply plug the servo’s color-coded wires into the shield's pins to easily control the movement of robot arms, steering kits, or secret latches.
Matrix
The 8x16 LED Matrix is a grid of 128 tiny lights that you can program to display scrolling text, scrolling patterns, or even simple animations. When combined with the Arduino Nano and Shield, it acts like a miniature digital billboard for your project.
Initial Exploration and Part Identification
Now that we have identified our electronic parts that make up our robot.
- Let’s explore where they might go
- What each parts role is for making our robot .. well a robot!
- After we will see if our intuition or gut feeling was right!
Component Match
Using the provided sheet, answer the following questions:
- What do you think each part does?
- Where does each part go?
Downloadable File:
Part location Identification
Inside the robot
- Grab your robot and carefully open up the head of the robot.
- See if you can identify the parts.
- Compare placement of components to your sheet
- Did you get them right?
Body Components
- In the body of the robot you will find 4 servos
- 2 controlling the arms
- 2 controlling the legs
- In the legs of the servo we have another 2 servos in the feet of the robot.
- In the body [upper left in photo] is the piezo buzzer
Head Components
- In the head of the robot is
- Arduino Nano which is plugged into the Arduino Nano Shield.
- The matrix 8x16 LED which is located in the rectangle shaped slot.
Let’s connect!
Now that you have a little familiarity with the components let’s get some practice connecting our components to our Brain [Arduino Nano]
We will connect
- Arduino Nano to Shield
- Buzzer to Shield
- Servos to Shield
- 8X16 LED Matrix to Shield
Arduino Nano and Shield
- Start by grabbing your Arduino Nano and Shield
- Line up Arduino Nano to the center of the Shield.
- Make sure all pins line up on the Nano with the holes on the Shield
- Push down until Nano is fully secured to Shield
Buzzer to Shield
Next we will connect the piezo buzzer to our Shield.
Two wire component
- Pick up buzzer
- Look at the legs on the buzzer.
- Long leg is positive = pin 13
- Short leg is negative= GND
- Grab two F-F wires in two different colors
- Slide F-F wire on to buzzer
- make a note of which color is attached to te long leg and which is attached to the short.
- Connect other side of F-F to Shield.
- Positive to pin 13 (blue pin)
- Shown with yellow wire
- Negative to GND (black pin)
- Shown with green wire
Servo to Shield
To connect your servos to the shield, align the color-coded wires with the pins on the board: the dark (black/brown) wire goes to GND (black pin), the red wire goes to VCC (red pin), and the light (yellow/orange) wire goes to Signal (yellow/white pin). Make sure the connector is pushed all the way down so your robot’s legs and arms have a solid connection to their "brain!"
Three wire component
We will start by connecting our servos to row 2.
- Yellow wire to S (signal)
- Red wire to V (positive)
- Brown wire to G (negative)
Repeat this step and add servos to rows 3, 4 & 5
LED Matrix to Shield
Last is the LED matrix. This component has 4 wires
Four wire component
Flipping the matrix on its face we can see what wires are connected to what on the back GND: Green VCC: Yellow SDA (Signal): Black = 10 SCL (Clock): Red = A5
To start we will place our SDS or black wire to pin 10
Next place SDA or red wire to pin A5
Last Add VCC (yellow) to 5V and GND (Green) to GND
With this you have completed your build of the basic Otto components. With this we are ready to start programming!
Optional: Adding Servo for Arms
If you want your robot to use its arms then add two more servos to pin 6 and in pin 7.
