SMARS Mini Big Personality, Tiny Robot 22 January 2023 2 minute read By Kevin McAleer Share this article on Table of Contents What is SMARS MiniTiny ElectronicsDownload the STLS and print todaySMARS Mini ElectronicsTiny Electronics for a large amounts of funVL53L0X - Time of Flight sensorL298N - Motor driver boardPimoroni Tiny2040N20 MotorsConstructionMicroPython Code Tags SMARS Mini Tiny Robot 3D Printing Code Repo View Code Repository on GitHub
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. Item Description Qty Price Time Of Flight VL53L0X 1 £19.50 L298N Motor Driver Board L298N 1 £12.90 Pimoroni Tiny2040 Pimoroni Tiny2040 1 £8.40 N20 Motors N20 Motors 2 £5.10 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