Chris Hakim’s Arduino-based Lil’ Bot was a huge success at this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire. The Lil’ Bot is an open-source, balancing robotics platform for learning, hacking, and fun. It is suitable for academics, hobbyists, and hackers to explore the digital electronics, mechanics, and software programming of balancing robots and control systems.

Chris says: “Last winter, I promised my eight-year-old son to build a little balancing robot that he could program. One thing led to another, and this robot turned out to be a much more elaborate project than originally envisioned.”

What makes this kit successful is the low cost price point by using inexpensive toy motors. As shown in the video on the Kickstarter page, the robot can move around, spin, stand upright, and stay balanced.  There is some wiggling when balancing, and this is a difficult problem. John Sokol has nonetheless done an excellent job writing the code for this balancing behavior given the low quality of the motors.

Block Based Programming

Lil’Blocks is a block-based programming language based on Fred Lin’s BlocklyDuino, a dialect of Neil Fraser’s Blockly for Arduino. Blockly is the Hour of Code’s choice for introducing children to programming. For the younger child, block programming is little more than assembling Lego bricks, yet allows a firm grasp of basic programming concepts.