Otto

Welcome to the Otto project!

Otto is ‘an open source modular robot with an epic personality,
a robot companion for learning STEM & Creativity‘ ~ https://www.ottodiy.com/

To build Otto you need to complete the following steps:

  1. 3D print the components that make up the robot body
  2. Obtain the required electronics components
  3. Assemble Otto
  4. Code Otto to bring it to life

Step 1 – 3D Printing Otto’s Body

  1. Download the following compress ‘zip’ file containing all of the body parts… OttoDIY_Parts.zip
  2. Open the compressed file you just downloaded, then copy and paste all of the ‘.stl’ files into a your project folder location in your project folder location (create one if you haven’t already).
  3. Open the 3D slicing software Tinkerine Suite, then ‘import’ an ‘.stl’ model file into the build theatre
  4. If you are unfamiliar with the Tinkerine software, follow Otto Project 3D Printing Guide to setup for your print.
  5. Complete the steps necessary to print the body parts.

Step 2 – Gather the required Electronic Components

You will need the following to make your Basic Otto robot:

  1. SG90 Servo Motors complete with hardware – 4 required
  2. Arduino Nano Breakout Board – 1 required
  3. Arduino Nano Microcontroller – 1 required
  4. HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor – 1 required

Step 3 – Assembling Otto

Open the following guide to assemble your robot…OttoDIY_InstructionsManual_V08

Step 4 – Coding Using the Otto Blockly IDE

  1. Locate the ‘Otto Blockly’ App on your computer and Launch it.
  2. Open the ‘Otto Blockly Guide‘ and work through it.

Step 4b – (Optional!) Hard Core Coding Using Arduino IDE

Time to bring Otto to life!  This will require two steps:

  1. installation of some libraries that will help to make coding Otto easier
  2. Downloading some starter code to upload to your robot

1.  Obtaining and installing libraries

  • download the following ‘zipped’ (compressed) folder…Otto Zipped Libaries
  • open the compressed ‘zip’ folder and you should see three folders inside that are also ‘zipped’.
  • You will need to copy and paste each of these folders to your project folder (make one if you don’t already have one, OneDrive a good location to do this in).
  • Open the Arduino IDE
  • Under the ‘Sketch’ tab hover over ‘Include libary’ and then select ‘Add .zip library’
  • Find one of the libraries that you saved to your project folder and then select ‘open’
  • Repeat this for the other two libraries

2. Obtaining a ‘starter code’

  • download this ‘zipped’ file…Otto_Basic_Starter_Program
  • open the zipped file and you should see a folder inside
  • copy the folder and paste it to your project folder location
  • In the Arduino IDE under ‘File’ select ‘open’, then navigate to your project folder and open the folder that you previously pasted.  Inside you will find a ‘.ino’ file.  Select this file then open it.
  • Examine the code and try to make sense of it.  Comment out portions of the code that do not apply to the most basic movement (we walk before we run!).
  • Try uploading the sketch to see what it does.
  • Adjust, play around, as necessary to make your robot do various movements.