Our little Bristle Bot
I really love the path we have chosen, the path of home education. Learning really does happen all of the time and I love that we are able to purely follow Nixie's interests. This little bristle bot is our first foray into robots, ok so I know this isn't a robot but it's been fun putting circuits together along with little batteries and making things move and this is a great start to our exploration of things robotic.
It was completely inspired by a series of books which were recommended to me: Wild Robot & Wild Robot escapes by Peter Brown. These two books completely captured Nixie's imagination and we loved them. It's about a robot named Roz who ends up on a deserted island and there she learns how to communicate with the animals becoming more and more conscious. At first the story seemed very basic lacking in depth but as Roz began to learn more and more and as she became more conscious the story began to have more and more depth. In the story Roz ends up caring for a baby goose and it is from this moment that Roz really comes to life. It is a story filled with adventure and heartache and we really fell in love with her, what a great series of books these were which we were so sad to end!
After we had finished reading them Nixie's attention immediately went to robots and she wanted to learn about them so as we looked online for ideas we came across the bristle bot which Nixie immediately wanted to make so I ordered the few supplies we didn't have and then we made some.
Materials:
1 Vibrating Motor – 6mm
1 LR44 Button Cell Battery
1 Toothbrush
2 Craft Eyes
2 Pipe Cleaners
Double Sided Tape (the thick kind)
Instructions
The first step is to cut the handle off the toothbrush leaving only the head as shown below. Next, you will need to cut a piece of double-sided tape and apply it to the top.
Once the double-sided tape has been applied, mount the vibration motor on top of it towards the end where the handle was. Place one of the motor wires on the tape and keep the other motor wire in the air. I had to strip the wire of some its covering so that more of the metal was exposed. Make sure not to push the wire deep into the double-sided tape. The reason for this is because you need the exposed wire to contact the battery and it won’t be able to if pushed deep into the tape.(ignore the messiness, my hands were covered in paint from an earlier project!)
Mount the button cell battery on the double-sided tape with the writing on it facing up. Make sure it contacts with the motor wire that is on the tape already.
Once the motor and battery have been mounted, you can now add the pipe cleaner legs. These legs help the robot stand up. Bend the pipe cleaner legs down and around the toothbrush head.
we added eyes to the first one we did, this last one was just to get some better photos!
Now is the time to fire up your bristlebot and see if it works. Bend the motor wire and push it between the button battery and the pipe cleaner. At this point, the robot should come alive and start moving around.
I can't post videos on here yet but here's a link to my instagram post where you can see our little Bristle bot in action!
We also decided to try to paint with it which was fun and for this we used one of our leftover Kiwi Crate Atlas boxes and taped a piece of paper inside. It proved to be the perfect thing for it. You need to have it in a box otherwise it will get pain everywhere!
