Makebot Robot Project

I'm getting ready to start working on my version of the Makebot robot. I purchased a Makebot last year to see what all it could do and how I could integrate it into my programming classes. It is a nice little robot which you can customize with other sensors, and parts and the programming code is very much like Scratch or Hour of Code with puzzle like pieces. The only problem that I had with it was that it was $80 price tag which for a class of 25 would be real budget buster for a public school teacher. Even getting 12 and have students share would be cost prohibitive, so I started checking into how much it would cost to build my own Makebot from scratch.

The good news is that it is only about $50 worth of parts and if my class 3D prints their body with all of the filament that I have collected over the years, then it makes it a doable project. Also, having the students build their own robot will be a great learning opportunity.th

To be fair, I have also collected quite a few Arduino kits last year for my Mini-Courses so I had kind of a head start with the most expensive part: the Arduino Uno. Having a ton of LEDs, resistors and other parts has really helped too. So I have everything I need to get started including a box full of motors and wheels.

First thing I need to do is solder some jumper wires to the motors so that the students can simply connect them on the breadboard. Then I need to work out how to use the motor controller with the Arduino.