Building a Two-Wheel Balancing Robot | with LG XBOOM Go Speakers

Check out the NEW White LG XBOOM Go: bit.ly/2IvJPrK
LG asked me to build a robot with one of their LG XBOOM Go speakers as its head. I've built a two-wheel balancing robot which used a gyro and accelerometer to stay stable. I'm using a Teensy 3.6 running a PID controller to keep the robot stable. Next time I'll add the arms and the radio controller.
① HARDWARE/SOFTWARE
What more important hardware is there in life than the clothes on your back and the cup in your hand. You can get your own Robot X tee or openDog mug at the link below:
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Below you can also find a lot of the typical tools, equipment and supplies used in my projects. Some of these links are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I might earn a little extra if you click and make a purchase.
Lulzbot 3D Printers: bit.ly/2Sj6nil
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And don't forget the code for some of my projects is available on my GitHub here: github.com/xrobots
② GENIUS
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③ XROBOTS
Former toy designer, current KZbin maker and general robotics, electrical and mechanical engineer, I’m a fan of doing it yourself and innovation by trial and error. My channel is where I share some of my useful and not-so-useful inventions, designs and maker advice. Iron Man is my go-to cosplay, and 3D printing can solve most issues - broken bolts, missing parts, world hunger, you name it.
XRobots is the community around my content where you can get in touch, share tips and advice, and more build FAQs, schematics and designs are also available.
④ MUSIC AND SFX
The majority of the music and SFX used in my videos is from Epidemic Sound share.epidemicsound.com/xrobots

[@jamesbruton]

Part 2 comes up next Tuesday - where I add the arms, body panels, and remote control!

[@dibblesvillard5268]

I like the video and the idea! (I know you're not hacky) one suggestion I have is you program it to speak and modify it to work with the sound maybe coming from some tts

[@curtstacy779]

This is a great project! this would be one more people could build and modify and add more and more to it. lots of room in the body for much more. I love it! you could even do three wheels if you need more stable for carrying things as a modification. I think you are on to something. I would love one running around the house. lol. good by Roomba lol

[@whoisisaac]

Very interesting. I like how, during the video, you rattle off the components and the open source examples for those of us who might be interested in trying something like this.

[@rajibsarkar01]

You are going to have a lot of wheel skid during turn because of your large wheel footprint.

[@rashaan64]

can you mount one of those motors on a linear actuator?

[@Spooglecraft]

Fun function for this one would be a "Follow" mode, where it follows a small transmitter you can fit in your pocket. Would be an interestin challenge to implement.

[@DJlegionuk]

Yes I was going to suggest to make it follow, it would be a cool addition to the project.

[@GeekIWG]

That would be awesome!

[@Francois_Dupont]

forget abiut that, the RF thecnology needed would be eay too much to detect the proximity.

[@whoisisaac]

What? I'm just taking my robot for a walk. He plays me music.

[@jameswalker199]

Blynk would probably be a good tool for that. At it's simplest you just need a GPS sensor on the robot and have it constantly try to match the GPS position of the phone. Toss in a Raspberry Pi or maybe a more powerful Jetson and use a Kinect to do obstacle avoidance.

[@a.kstudio2306]

Probably the most underrated channel 😢😢😢... Superb buddy

[@GrahamDIY]

I don’t honestly know where you find all the hours in the week to do all these great projects!

[@Aristo12]

He has 3D printed robot assistants! :P

[@Usq7213]

I really want his channel to grow more and more so that more and more people cant get educated by his genius projects

[@ghismo]

“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

[@Will_Huff]

Love this James! Seems like it went together really well! Can’t believe how well it balances with that mass! Can’t wait to see it under control!

[@starblastershooter2444]

You inspire me everyday, I'm also getting into robotics and this just made me want to build my big robot more thanks james

[@nabilsellami2707]

Really glade that you're back to the cool stuff.

[@steveburley3738]

Truly awesome James. You can build anything. Cheers!

[@Nabilphysics]

First time in your channel I have seen a project where outcome is more than Engineering!!!

[@antonwinter630]

its nice that they are sponsoring you. and their product fits in with your robots!

[@spicymemeboi2646]

Perfectly balanced. As all things should be.

[@Thuliolima2008]

Perfect!

[@rendermandan2820]

James, Excellent!!! I can't tell you enough how great it is to see a project that most of us could handle doing. Keep these new kind of "Smaller" projects coming. -That's not to say I don't enjoy the others. I'm not trying to insult you at all, I just think that sometimes projects get a little too complicated at times and some of us have a hard time following along. :) Cheers and Thank you!!!

[@robertperly6104]

Great work 👍🏻👍🏻

[@ABID5]

Impressive

[@Usq7213]

Awesome! you always make projects that I want but I don't have the time to research and then build it... Thanks for sharing.

[@justdigginitdetecting8794]

Cool James

[@sandylancaster5901]

amazing work keep it up

[@Alluvian567]

Nice, I like the project!

[@WickedV3ng3nc3]

You are one amazing dude!

[@garagemonkeysan]

Cool robot! Great film. Cheers! : )

[@_Piers_]

This is a great way to feature sponsored content James, well done.

[@alhdlakhfdqw]

great video Thank you very much James! please keep up ur great work :)

[@GearDownForWhat]

We could set up a play date for our balancing cars 😂

[@TacoMaster3211]

You should try getting some synthesizer chips, and synthesize a voice for it.

[@girass]

Great sponsorship idea and cool project, I'm amazed how much progress you make in each video these days. Keep up the great work James :)

[@jamesbruton]

thanks!

[@davidz2016]

Make it great . Lol it looks like a Nintendo robot.dude you really love your projects you can see how you grew over the years . Keep it up .

[@masonstapleton8236]

im shock, you done so much work in a very short amount of time

[@BenRyherd]

Could you make a "Tuning Remote" that has 4 or 5 knobs and a few switches and a screen? Then you can live tune the PID loop and the centerpoint/setpoint and then just record the values from the screen and put them back into the original code.

[@marcio6498]

Hello James, you're a robotics genius, your job is fantastic, sensational. Could you provide the step-by-step tutorial of the project with the components, measures and schema? It's for a school job. Please, James.

[@sujitvasanth2502]

Wow James! This is great - I havent seen many oversized ones of these - felt like star wars but in real life- would be able to make a really good household service robot with this to deliver drinks from the fridge etc... please keep working on this. really good!

[@jamesbruton]

There is one more video next week!

[@lukethenuke8519]

Nice

[@rashaan64]

is it possible to mount one of those motors on a linear actuator?

[@Alientraveler003]

Amazing just subed

[@firefly2472]

Cool

[@CarboN428]

i think you should consider adding adjustable balance tail which might help with riding forward while holding things, or adding force sensors to the arms that will allow to calculate the new ballance angle good luck -,-

[@NoName-zr8ir]

wow

[@Dust599]

Really hope there is going to be some teensy generated "8 bit" audio for the speaker to play. Over bluetooth of course!

[@shravan1981]

Wow... super quick one... very well done. How much does it cost for the parts and filaments

[@Vass881234]

is it true stereo or both L&R from both speakers ?

[@ericmarks960]

Hello James, great project, I would like to recreate that, can you give out the CAD files? Thanks a lot greetings Eric

[@michaelthompson8251]

Can this design to up and down stairs?

[@HaroldPulcher]

Could I get a parts list for all the non-printable bits?

[@johannesc3252]

The coolest placement I've ever seen.

[@jamesbruton]

super!

[@CerebralDad]

I have to say; one of my favorite projects to date. Do you have the parts list and stl/gcode files on thingiverse? Please and Thank you!

[@Killernova86]

"It's a good brand because it's lg" XD

[@nagualdesign]

😆..

[@thegreatwarrior1239]

Could you get the robot to follow you through some kind of blue tooth controller?

[@3dssolidsnake]

Add some proximity and IR sensors(a few bucks), or possibly a camera for object tracking so it could follow its owner.

[@OldCurmudgeon3DP]

Wonder how an ESP32 would stack up against the Teensy.

[@heiismail]

what cnc machine you used, and how much it cost?

[@joesubbiani]

Would you ever try make a working Wall-E robot?

[@laureven]

Finally, You started thinking about making money :). Your projects are not cheap. Regards :)

[@Paul-rs4gd]

Ninjaflex is not cheap ! Any commercially available tires of around that size (looks like 15 - 20 cm diameter) ?

[@ALTAMEDIADIGITALCOMPANY]

Will there be github for this amazing work? Thanks and have a good day

[@hakimchannel]

Dudeeeee, how many hours these videos take you, too much hard work, when I make videos in my channel, they take less than your channel, you are a pro

[@Usq7213]

Maybe part 3 can be to give the robot computer vision (openCV) with maybe raspberry pi but it is not powerful to image process (low fps) so a more powerful one would be Jetson nano from Nvidia. Again great video James!:DD

[@jamesbruton]

That will happen in another project series I have coming up soon

[@Usq7213]

I am definitely really excited about that James!:o

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

What did you do use multiple printers ?I bet it took a week to do each wheel ?

[@VideoStefan17]

awesome! haha, you kinde looked y little sad, because you did not need to fiddle that much ;) greetings

[@thetastefultoastie6077]

Please make the arms move to the music!

[@pythonjava6228]

I'm looking for advice about a good robotics simulator to create a virtual robot. I'm trying to do a digital twin of a robot I have. It's built with a raspberry pi and run by python so ideally the simulator will be able to represent that. I also would want to control the virtual robot with my own GUI. Are there any softwares I can use to do this?

[@Spooglecraft]

ROS (Robot Operating System) and the Gazebo Simulator. Takes a bit to get used to, but is documented well enough. Python is supported. You could actually use a real RPi to control the virtual robot, as ROS is designed to be a distributed system. You'd have to write your own GUI module, though there are some made by other users.

[@dddxp7311]

do you shared this as a tutorial? the code you used?

[@mihai3343]

Nice work! Did you use a sampling timpe of 10ms for the PID? Any additional filtering made on the IMU data?

[@jamesbruton]

The MPU6050 has DMP so it gives you accurate values. Yes 10ms, but 20 would do just as well.

[@mihai3343]

Thanks for answering this. I'm also working on a similar project and I can't get it to work for quite a while now. Maybe adding some extra mass on the top of the robot would help me also.

[@hydealmen8369]

Will you ever finish Johnny five as a robot

[@jameswalker199]

How are the lights on the speaker controlled? You can't connect it to your microcontroller and set colours from the remote control, can you? That'd be fun if you could, and good for LG because I always go for easily hackable products!

[@jamesbruton]

by the sound coming out of the speakers

[@electron-1979]

P=V^2/R (Power = Voltage squared / R), so if you double the voltage, you quadruple the power, generally

[@pascha4527]

motors are inductors, not resistors.

[@electron-1979]

@@pascha4527 So true! But power is not proportional to voltage, is it? The speed and torque is proportional to voltage, isn't it?

[@seiyonarulampalam7354]

Nice project! I was wondering if Jeff Rowberg's library is compatible with the teensy 3.6 without any modifications to the code in the library. I am eager to get a teensy, but not entirely sure how my arduino code will transfer to the teensyduino. Any suggestions?

[@jamesbruton]

Yes

[@seiyonarulampalam7354]

@@jamesbruton thank you for the advice can’t wait to get working with a teensy!

[@spacenoodles5570]

So close to 666k subs

[@renomacca1967]

any balance addon on the speaker robot help the dog walk

[@Corbald]

James makes robots out of various consumer goods? I'd watch a series about that.... /wink

[@Mr.Donahue]

You should try to build Johnny #5 from short circuit.

[@CDRaff]

Search the channel; he worked on one a while back.

[@eldaine]

well done big guy! i wish you all the confidence you can expect' you inspire me never stop : )

[@woodworks5009]

I noticed that your CNC table isn't very rigid. This will reduce quality exponentially. Also a tip for cutting holes with a CNC just cut the outside of the circle and maybe use tabs it will cut down proces time Exponentially (no pun intended)

[@jamesbruton]

Yes it is, the table is not rigid: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWrGgoecrc6rfJo

[@rowanhayes497]

Why don't you make the head swivel toward sound like with ultron?

[@StevenIngram]

Boombot!

[@devadershan]

hi iam trying to build a bicycle power meter using strain gauges accelerometer as some diy suggest iam stuck with writing the code for it , can you help me????

[@Dzatoah]

Hey if you want help with coding, try asking a forum like stackoverflow.com/ and please explain your problem to the last detail

[@ericmarks960]

Hello James, great videos, keep it up :-) are there two-wheel balancing robot stl or CAD files? Didn't find them on xRobots, thanks for the help Greetings from Germany Eric

[@jamesbruton]

github.com/XRobots/SonicRobot

[@ericmarks960]

@@jamesbruton ok, thanks James, but I meant the one with LG XBOOM Go Speakers, is there something for that? greetings Eric

[@gavinhicks7621]

You should add like a voice command thing like an Alexa with a digital mouth to make it look more like a face😂

[@jamesbruton]

The speaker can already do that if you pair it with your phone and use Siri or an Android app.

[@gavinhicks7621]

James Bruton oh cool is that a plan of yours

[@davidball8370]

Great video and great robot! Also jump to 13.46 to see how to sell a product James Brunton Style !

[@ericthomas2621]

What are the motors that you are using?

[@ericthomas2621]

Never mind, I figured it out.

[@huynhdat2218]

Hay à nha

[@urbantracker1879]

عالی بود

[@10p6]

Interesting Robot segway speaker. 240 pounds for the large BT speaker though, ROFLMAO.

[@adamsolovay51]

How much did all this cost you?

[@djuang.6227]

Hey @James Bruton, I know this is fairly old but could you publish the code for this robot on your github please?

[@deslomeslager]

No sound from the speakers? Did you get empty demo boxes? Did you get paid for all materials used?

[@jamesbruton]

Wait for part 2

[@deslomeslager]

@@jamesbrutonWill do! Love your channel.

[@oetken007]

The labeling on your crane is in the wrong order, isn't it? It must be 1/2, 1, 1 1/2, 2Ton I think ;-)

[@shoogie1994]

put a mini keg in the chest and a tap on the arm

[@Designandrew]

he should be able to serve drinks!!

[@bummer6]

couldn't you technically use off the shelf hoverboard components for something like this?

[@dynorat12]

look really good ha ha it ran over your foot

[@smh1448]

Hello James, I'd like one of those speakers, if it isn't inconvenient for you. Thanks.

[@gustavoa.rodriguezmena3502]

Will he ever finish a project?

[@jamesbruton]

This one finished next week. The only other ongoing project now is openDog - until my next series starts shortly.

[@azyfloof]

If you're looking for a name for the little guy in the future, can I suggest Brian? 😜 🤖

[@spacenoodles5570]

I suggest Thanos, because it's perfectly balanced

[@LucasHartmann]

XBoom Go... ing to kill us all!

[@blueprintgamer6108]

u should make it follow your bluetooth signal so your little robo buddy follows u and u can still hear the music

[@pascha4527]

impossible

[@blueprintgamer6108]

how so? i guess tracking with bluetooth would be hard but there are other ways

[@kornelillyes2848]

biped when? ;)

[@jamesbruton]

Well, in the past, quite a few times. Check out Robot X and the GONK Droid

[@spork8721]

49 seconds ago

[@whatthefunction9140]

I know you build robots but who built you?

[@jamesbruton]

robots

[@whatthefunction9140]

@@jamesbrutonI knew it. it's robots the whole way up.

[@SystemsPlanet]

@@jamesbruton Klaatu barada nikto

[@gamingstudio83]

Most of the parts are here for SA biastonu.com/2Jgc

[@khaldOmeer]

👏👏👏👏👏👏👌👌👌👌👏👏👏👏👏