Pimoroni Scroll Bot.
Still recovering from another slice of Pi, Les Pounder settles down on a wet spring afternoon to build a cheery robot face. As you do…
Les Pounder tests the fun Pi Zero kit that helps you build a message-spewing robot.
The raspberry Pi Zero W has now been with us for just a few months, but in this short time it’s caused quite a stir. £10 for a computer with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is hard to resist, but what if you’re new to the scene? Well, fear not because retailers such as Pimoroni have brought out a range of products to introduce you to the world of the Raspberry Pi.
The Scroll Bot kit is a self-assembly kit that comes with everything you need to build a Raspberry Pi Zero W-powered light-up gadget. You get a Pi Zero W, and the latest Scroll pHAT HD add-on board (more on that later). You also receive the adapters to enable your Pi Zero W to be used with an HDMI screen and USB devices.
In lieu of a USB power supply the kit comes with a USB A to micro USB lead. Given the meagre power requirements of the Pi Zero W you can easily find a power supply in your home. The kit to build the robot frame are laser cut using the same equipment as used to build the famous Pibow cases, and all of the fixings are included in the kit.
Assembling the kit of laser-cut parts is simple. The Pi Zero W and the Scroll pHAT HD require header pins to be soldered, or you can use hammer headers if you don’t fancy turning up the heat. With the kit built, it’s then simply a matter of installing Raspbian, but you’ll need to source your own SD card because one isn’t included.
Once Raspbian is installed and booted, you’ll need to use the software installer to install the Python libraries for the Scroll pHAT HD board, and then run the included examples to see what the board can do.
The Scroll pHAT HD replaces the earlier Scroll pHAT board and offers a grid of 17x7 LEDs, a total of 119 white LEDs. Much improved over the Scroll pHAT 11x5, 55 LEDs.
The Scroll pHAT HD can be used to scroll text, animations or simple images across the matrix of LEDs. In our review we made an RSS feed reader that scrolled the top five news items from various websites, but you could easily use the Scroll pHAT HD to show server status information, weather or tweets using a particular hashtag. The included examples range from simple scrolling text, to impressive plasma effects that use complex mathematics to show off the board’s capabilities.
Affordable package
The Scroll Bot kit is a great introduction to the Raspberry Pi. The £35 price tag may look expensive but the Pi Zero W with adapters and Scroll pHAT HD come in at £26 on their own, so for the extra £9 we get the laser-cut kit, USB lead and a rather nice box that can be reused to store your ever-growing Raspberry Pi or Maker accessories.
The kit is easy to build, although some people may struggle with soldering the Pi Zero W and the Scroll pHAT HD, but you could always ask your local Makerspace for help. Apart from the SD card you need to supply, the Pi Zero W is ready to go and can be used either as an embedded device or as a typical computer.
The Scroll pHAT HD is a fun board. Sure it doesn’t have as many uses as other boards on the market, but what it does do, it does well. Scrolling text name badges, news tickers or a lovely smile for a robot are only a few lines of Python away!