Happy New Year – let’s see what 2026 brings!
The Christmas period was fairly quiet in terms of Tinkimo’s progress, but not completely idle. I’ve added more information to the website and done a small restructure behind the scenes.
My main focus recently has been creating a physical version of the robot. This weekend, in particular, saw some really good progress towards a working prototype. Most of the components are now in place, and I’ve been on a pretty steep learning curve getting to grips with CAD and 3D printing.
The body is now more or less complete, with almost everything fitted. The remaining bits to add are the 5-volt regulator, the gyro/accelerometer, and the charging system.
I’m still a little unsure about the LCD display I’ve bought – it might be a bit on the small side. I’ll get it wired up and running and see how it feels. Worst case, I change it. It is a prototype, after all!
At the moment I’m using components from the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, which has influenced some of the design decisions around size and layout. Once everything is up and running, I’ll start looking at cost and assembly to see whether designing custom PCBs would make more sense.
I’m hoping to post a video of it working soon, which will definitely feel like a big milestone.
Terri
