PICAXE Microbot Powered by Solar Energy

This small solar powered programmable microbot is capable of generating horizontal motion using vibration and hence, was named as vibrobot.

The assembly of the circuit is done on a small piece of stripboard which makes it compact. The piezo is supported by the square shape of the capacitor and the motor is anchored. Glued on top of the motor is the solar cell which can be accessed from the bottom of the board since it is a double-male. This is because the programming header is hard to get to once the solar cell is glued. Since small-signal diodes are easily bent when putting the robot down on a hard surface, medium power diodes are used for the legs.

With frequency proportional to the capacitor voltage, the eyes are flashed by the program. The microbot will start to vibrate at a predetermined voltage threshold. The vibrobot will play a few seconds of random tones once in a while. A Happy Birthday tune accompanied with flashing eyes is played if the tail switch is pressed.

A nonlinear component allows the microcontroller to determine the capacitor charge while using random microcontroller numbers.

Rest of the project