What is SMARS Mini

SMARS Mini is smaller version of the original SMARS Robot. It is 1/10 the size of the original, barely wide enough to house the two N20 Motors.

Tiny Electronics

SMARS Mini is so small it needs to have special, tiny electronics, to fit in the chassis. These include the VL53L0X Time of Flight sensor, that uses a tiny laser to sense objecst up to two meters away. These are just as cheap as the original sensor but much, much smaller.

Download the STLS and print today

Download the files and start printing out your own SMARS Mini today.

SMARS Mini is available from Thingiverse, where you can grab all the STLs for the following parts:

• chassis.stl - The main robot body
• wheel.stl - The wheels, you’ll need 4x of these
• face.stl - The ToF range finder holder (it looks like a face!)
• motor_driver.stl - The motor driver board holder

SMARS Mini Electronics

Tiny Electronics for a large amounts of fun

SMARS Mini is so small it needs to have special, tiny electronics, to fit in the chassis.

VL53L0X - Time of Flight sensor

These include the VL53L0X Time of Flight sensor, that uses a tiny laser to sense objecst up to two meters away. These are just as cheap as the original sensor but much, much smaller.

L298N - Motor driver board

The Mini also uses a small L298N Motor driver board to control the N20 servos.

Pimoroni Tiny2040

The brains of the SMARS Mini is a Pimoroni Tiny2040, which uses the same RP2040 chip as the Raspberry Pi Pico. Infact this chip has more flash storage than the Pico - coming in at 8Mb of flash storage.

N20 Motors

SMARS Mini uses the same N20 motors found in the original SMARS

Construction

MicroPython Code

SMARS Mini uses the same code as the PicoSMARS robot:

https://github.com/kevinmcaleer/picosmars