Robot Constuction Project

This is my son's and my first robot construction project.  The first part of the project is the Brain Control Module.  The module began life as a 56k Creative Labs PCI internal modem.  As you can see, we have adapted the unit by removing the metal backing and jamming a cleverly-improvised antenna under a microchip.

As you know, a Brain Control Module doesn't come from the shop with a physical control unit, so we obviously had to install one of our own.  That's a fifteen-year-old PC joystick that has had its connector wires stripped and attached to the twisted pair copper wires from the similarly-stripped unwanted telephone connector.  Best of all, we can just snap the end of the cable right into the Brain Control Module.  (BCM)

The antenna on the BCM is specially tuned, because it came from the same box of paper clips, to transmit to the antennas on the remotely-controlled robot unit.  The robot itself is made up of one Jimmy Neutron toy, with two straightened paper clips as antennas and the lens from a broken digital camera as an eye.  You can see the lens is zip-tied to Jimmy's backwards head.

Altogether, I would say the project was a success, although the robot didn't actually do anything.  The green star is not connected to this research project in any way, except that it was another candidate for disassembly.