Working to  connect a Raspberry Pi to a reprap made me think about resurrecting my BeerBot project. I worked on this in 2012. It is a robot made of a lego mindstorms kit with a raspberry pi sat on top of it. The pi acts as a mini web server broadcasting images from a webcam at the front. The robot can then be steered using SSH and can pick up beer.

The video shows the BeerBot eventually picking up a can of beer. It’s being steered using a python program run over SSH (you can hear the typing in the background). Please excuse the loud warthog-like breathing sounds.

The video is quite old, since then I have started using the raspberry pi camera rather than the webcam and have added a high gain wireless dongle so that it doesn’t lose signal as it drives around the house. I have also knocked one of the power capacitors off the raspberry pi by mistake so it needs some repairs.

One of the reasons I first thought about buying a Huxley kit was to make new parts for the BeerBot. Maybe its time to re-examine this project and see what I can add to its beer-fetching capabilities…

This is a video I dug up of operating an early claw over the SSH terminal while watching the webcam output. At this time I was having problems using the wireless so it was immobile and plugged in to the router using ethernet.