Mousey the Junkbot at the Maker Faire

The Maker Faire is only a few days away (May 19, 20). Yay! (and) Holy crap, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do!

I’m going to be running “Building Mousey the Junkbot” workshops. Actually what most people will likely be building is “My Mousey the Car” (shown here), a quicker, simpler version, with two DC motors, a battery/batt snap, and a toggle switch. There’s going to be a zillion things going on at the Faire. I suspect a lot of people won’t want to take up all their time at this one event. So, they can build the car version there and then add the brains and sensors at home. We’ll have two parts bundles available, a car kit, and one with the parts to make the full Mousey.

We’ll have plenty of dead computer mice on hand, but to further save time, I strongly suggest that folks bring an already prepped mouse. To help with that, I’ve created this brief tutorial. With an already gutted, prepared mouse, all you’ll have to do is solder in the electronics.

Here are some other Mousey-related resources:

Mousey Pages on Street Tech.

Mousey the Junkbot FAQ I just created this doc in preparation for the Faire. It’s the collected Q/A wisdom from several years of Mousey building.

The free Mousey project PDF from Make Vol. 2

The Mousebot Revisited tips and tricks companion piece on Instructables:

Mousey the Junkbot is a TV star!. Mousey on The Colbert Report with Mark Frauenfelder.

Hope to see some of you at the Faire!

Digg!