Started tinkering with a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design for the robot due to reaching the limits of a small breadboard design.
If the Xiao ESP32S3 Sense is to be used which has a camera + an additional i2s microphone is added (for now getting the onboard Sense mic working under Micropython is not easy) + a small fan & potentially it’s control circuit (the Xiao gets hot!) then adding currently omitted debounce circuits for the whiskas etc then all this is not possible on a small breadboard unsurprisingly.
It’s a bit of a leap of faith as the whiskas and distance sensor haven’t yet been proven to be of use.
Always dreamed of a “One PCB” approach for the robot then creating several to test the swarming theory.
However, this robot design is a kind of swiss army knife approach that ‘does it all’ – Socially Interacting Detecting Swarms (SIDS) – rather than the originally envisioned emergent behaviour from simple robots.
It would be interesting if it does work though it’s feeling a little counterintuitive. Always liked Occam’s Razor!
Anyhow, let’s see how a PCB design looks first then take it from there…Software may be completely redesigned too before too long but first things first.