Solar Powered Vibrobot

I like robots. Who doesn't? So, when I came across a MAKE magazine article about solar powered vibrobots, I had to give it a try. The solar powered aspect intrigued me, and I wanted more experience soldering. This seemed like a good excuse to do both.

Aside from the parts they have listed on their website, you will NEED a helping hands tool for the soldering. Most of us don't have 4 hands and holding lead based solder in your mouth is not a great idea. Seriously though, if you don't have a helping hands tool, you will suffer and hate your life during this project as it is all freeform, dead-bug soldering.

Notice the helping hands "helping". This is what the bot looked like after soldering was complete. I made a couple mistakes along the way:

1. The schematic calls for a 2.2kohm resistor. I soldered on a 220 ohm resistor. Here's a tip: don't do that. That resistor sits in the middle of a small nest of wires and is hard to replace.

2. I soldered the solar cell to the wrong leads. There was a + and - drawn on the circuit board, so I assumed this was the output. Wrong. There was an even bigger + and - on the board that I didn't see until after the fact.

Essentially I screwed up 50% of the soldering.

Here is what it looks like finished with paperclips and heat shrink tubing in place. You can use your soldering iron to shrink your tubing, or you can use the fancy heat gun that I had access to.

Profile glamour shot. By the way the backdrop is a piece of printer paper curved onto the cushions of my couch.

Here it is in "action". You too can spend time and money to create a solar powered robot that will vibrate gently with little to no discernible movement. Sounds like fun doesn't it?