The Hexbug sold by Radio Shack is a tiny robotic insect with very simple reflexive “reverse-turn upon obstacle” response. Interesting, but it quickly gets old. How about giving it a real brain? I created a replacement PC board using a PIC microcontroller, and wrote code to give it much more personality. It can now avoid obstacles (as stock), blink, ‘sing’, dance (OK, so its steps are a little bit limited...), detect light, check if its batteries are low, and go into a very low-power sleep state. It can be expanded to be controlled with a TV remote and go off to recharge itself. New behaviours can be easily reprogrammed into it. Because the hardware is so simple, it could be a good choice for a robotic competition – with limited resources, winning would be more dependent upon ingenuity and creative
programming.

The article details what’s inside, the controller design, the schematic, basic software and how to assemble, test, and program it. Read it here. One of the intents of the project was to see how much could be done with a minimum of hardware. Because the PIC MCU’s I/O can be reconfigured ‘on-the-fly’, by carefully combining peripheral functions very few pins can do a great deal. In a commercial product, this translates into reduced costs with greater functionality.

Read more: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Market_Communication/DEC%202008%20...