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Getting Started with Robot Faces

Here are the steps you can use to get started drawing your own robot faces.

Step 1: Getting Hardware

You can order the parts online or work with one of our programs that supply parts for classrooms. The minimal drawing kit contains:

  1. A Raspberry Pi Pico
  2. A mini solderless [Breadboard]../docs/parts-lists/#solderless-breadboard)
  3. An OLED display
  4. M-F jumper wires

Step 2: Installing Software

We use the "Thonny" editor to program our faces. To use it you will need to:

  1. Download and install Thonny
  2. Initialize the runtime by using the Thonny Tools -> Options -> Interpreter and select the Raspberry Pi Pico option
  3. Press the Install Runtime button
  4. Press the Stop/Reset and you should see the prompt:
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>>> 
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
MicroPython v1.19.1-854-g35524a6fd on 2023-02-07; Raspberry Pi Pico with RP2040
Type "help()" for more information.
>>>

Drawing Your Fist Face

You can now copy our "simple-face.py" program into your microcontroller into your Thonny program and press the green "Run" button. You will see the following on your display:

Robot Face