This fun project is great for beginners and seasoned makers alike. A scaled-up Infineon and MIT animatronik XXL Chatbot. This is the perfect after-the-holiday project for those who are ready to dive into an electronics project.
This chatbot is a larger version of the 3D Printed “Greeting Chatbot,” released by the Infineon team back in June 2022. For those who don’t have an Ender 5 Plus 3D printer the “Greeting Chatbot,” is the perfect alternative. But for those with a little larger printer, then the Animatronik XXL Chatbot can guard your front door and greet all your visitors.
The Ender 5 Plus produced the maximum size parts for the Chatbot, and they came out in grand style.
Infineon’s chatbot has very expressive eyes, where many emotions are reflected. There is a curved belly screen for even greater displays of emotion.
To create realistic eyes, that reflect the chatbot’s emotions, the system had to be flexible. To do this, Infineon created the round PCB. The custom PCB has 101 SK6812 MINI RGB LEDs in a circular pattern. The total diameter of the eye is 60mm, and production documents are available at the Infineon team/hackster.io website here.
Setting up a single data line to daisy chain the LEDs, you control the SK6812MINI in a way that is similar to the WS2812. The best way to do this is by using the available Neopixel libraries that are available from Adafruit. The eye expressions are all loaded into the libraries and ready to control The system uses an XMC2Go microcontroller to reflect Chatbot’s emotions.
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The other display is the curved belly display, which needed to be partially round to fit in the body of Chatbot. The pieces are separate 3D printed parts, glued into the cylindrical torso of Chatbot.
The display shield is from Adafreuit and the display is run from an Arduino Mega. The matrix is a 32×32 RGB LED Matrix Panel at Adafruit. There are animations just for the holiday season for the matrix, provided on the Hackster.io website. The animations are 32×32 pixels and are found here from z1c0 maker.
Adafruit also offers a 64×32 flexible RGB LED Matric, which also works great in Chatbot.
The full instructions for the Animatronik Chatbot, scaled-up version, XXL Chatbot can be found on Hackster.io website and Infineon’s website from the maker page.
Infineon Team | Infineon.com/makers
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For the past 8 years, I have been writing about embedded technologies, added to my technical, academic, and medical editorial experience, with companies like Elsevier and Cambridge University Press. I tell people to read what I write, not try to pronounce my last name. I am always available for comments and suggestions you can reach me at product-editor@circuitcellar.com and I promise I will take the time to reach back out to you. I live in the North East with my wonderful family.
