Scroll Bot - Pi Zero W Project Kit

A robot friend to sit on your desk and scroll the news, weather, or your Twitter feed - Scroll Bot!

The Scroll Bot Kit* combines the Pi Zero W with our new swish Scroll pHAT HD board, and masquerades as a friendly orange robot, perfect for sitting on your desk or on a shelf. It's ideal for scrolling messages or for simple animations and, of course, it takes advantage of the built-in wireless LAN on the Pi Zero W. It'll take around 30 minutes to assemble everything** (check out our assembly guide for details).

Kit contents*

• Pi Zero W
• Scroll pHAT HD with 17x7 individually dimmable white LEDs
• Male and female 2x20 pin headers
• Orange robot stand and diffuser
• 50cm USB A to micro-B cable
• USB A (female) to micro B (male) adaptor
• Mini to full-size HDMI adaptor
• Sticker sheet (personalise your Scroll Bot!)
• Comes in a reusable kit box

*Just add your own micro-SD card
**Note that this is a soldering project, although you could use one of no-solder hammer headers!

Scroll Bot uses our new Scroll pHAT HD board, a dense matrix of 17x7 (119 total) bright white LEDs. Each pixel's brightness can be controlled individually, meaning that it's possible to create stunning animations or even anti-aliased text. The LED matrix sits behind Scroll Bot's mouth, and the frosted orange acrylic diffuses the LEDs beautifully.

Use the built-in wireless LAN to make your Scroll Bot internet-connected and have him/her/it inform you of the latest news, weather, track hashtags or mentions on Twitter, or much, much more.

Features

• 17x7 matrix of bright white pixels (119 total)
• Individual PWM brightness control of each pixel
• Uses the IS31FL3731 LED matrix driver chip
• 3-layer orange robot stand and diffuser
• Pi Zero W with single core CPU and built-in wireless LAN and Bluetooth
• Adaptor kit
• 50cm USB A to micro-B cable (power your Pi from an existing charger or computer)
• Python library
• Female and male headers require soldering

Software

Our handy one-line installer will install the Scroll pHAT HD Python library for you. We've included a bunch of examples too, to show off what you can do with Scroll pHAT HD.

Note: that the default orientation for Scroll pHAT HD is upside-down if you're using it in a Scroll Bot. To flip it, simply add scrollphathd.rotate(180) towards the top of your code, just below the import lines.

Notes

Assembled size of Scroll Bot is 125x85x67mm (WxHxD).