Planet Arduino

If you were a kid in the 1980s you might have been lucky enough to score a Big Trak — a robotic toy you could program using a membrane keyboard to do 16 different motions. [Howard] has one, but not wanting to live with a 16-step program, he gave it a brain transplant with an Arduino and brought it on [RetroManCave’s] video blog and you can see that below.

If you want to duplicate the feat and your mom already cleaned your room to make it a craft shop, you can score one on eBay or there’s even a new replica version available, although it isn’t inexpensive. The code you need is on GitHub.

The CPU isn’t the only upgrade, as the updated Big Trak has an OLED display. [Howard] plans to add either WiFi or Bluetooth and wire the keyboard up to the onboard Arduino. [Howard] shows the inside and there is a lot of room by today’s standards. Of course, we wanted to see the original PCB, but it was nowhere to be found. Luckily, we found an image of the single-sided PCB on Wikipedia, so if you are like us, you can see it below, under the video.

There’s no wiring diagram that we could see, but from the Arduino code you can back out what the connections are to the sonar, the OLED display, and the new motor drivers for the original motors.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first Big Trak that has made it to the pages of Hackaday. Of course, we have no shortage of hacked toy robots.

Bigtrak PCB Image – [Sergio Calleja] CC BY-SA 2.0

[Michael Sng], founder of [Machination Studio], wanted to create a toy line unlike anything the world has seen.  He has recently completed the first production prototype in the Codename Colossus toy line: the HMC Boudicca. The egg-shaped HMC Boudicca is tank-like with a definite Metal Slug vibe, but it’s almost a disservice calling it a toy.

The HMC Boudicca is over 20″ tall. It is composed of over 400 parts, a majority of which are 3D-printed or laser-cut. Internal parts are FDM while the external pieces are SLS printed. It is a kinetic piece that walks in a hexapodal fashion, so there are lots of servos, motors, sensors, and LEDs, that are controlled by an Arduino. A lot of work and attention to detail was put into this prototype. The HMC Boudicca was designed to be easily disassembled with a Phillips screwdriver. The electronic components are all plug-in devices, so no soldering is required when it comes time to replace a sensor or servo.

Codename Colossus is a toy line that is made to order and intended to be artisanal in nature. Each piece will be individually hand-painted and assembled like the HMC Boudicca. While no official prices are posted yet on the site, we assume these are not going to be cheap. In fact, the site states that each piece will have a 2% markup from the previously sold price to help maintain the value of the pieces and control cost inflation. This could be a source of contention for potential buyers. It underscores [Michael’s] philosophy that Codename Colossus is meant to be a collectible work of art, an antithesis to mass production.

Regardless of the business strategy, we are interested in seeing any additional designs for this series. It would be fun to see a whole bunch of these marching as one robot army!

Here are some additional videos showing the HMC Boudicca in motion.

[via Reddit]