DIY Telepresence Robotics – Mobile Video Chat
Sparky Jr is a homebuilt robot from basic hardware and leftover materials that acts as a mobile video telepresence robot. It has a forward mounted screen and webcam so you can chat as well as WiFi and computer hardware to enable the communication.
The hardware needed to build Sparky Jr is pretty straight forward. An old Mac computer, 7†VGA screen, communication hardware such as the webcam, and a roomba vacuum cleaner. Sparky can be driven with WASD from a computer keyboard or it can be programmed to respond to a video game controller. All of the software and instructions needed to build Sparky Jr. are included in the guide and can be downloaded to your computer.
The site itself covers the hobby of creating Sparkies around the world. The homepage is full of conferences, demonstrations and conventions where people show off their Sparky creations. Many heavily mod the original and come up with something truly unique like the ones above. You can ‘add a blog post’ to the homepage yourself to post pictures of your Sparky and describe how you built it. There is also a discussion forum.
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