About this video
A short build video shows how to attach a bent paperclip antenna to the Spout robot's switch. The presenter keeps one side of the paperclip straight, holds the bot on its side with the antenna pointing down, and hot glues the flat section on, using just enough glue to cover both sides without spilling. After both antennae are on, the bot is tested for movement, with LEDs off.
You'll be able to
- prepare a paperclip antenna by keeping one flat side straight
- position and hot glue the antenna onto the switch without spilling glue
- explain why the build is tested and how the bot's movement is judged
Key words
- Antenna
- The bent paperclip wire glued onto the Spout bot's switch.
- Straight side
- The flat, unbent end of the paperclip that makes the connection easier and is glued onto the switch.
- Hot glue
- A melted adhesive used to fix the antenna in place, which must cool until it turns opaque.
- Switch
- The part of the bot the antenna is glued to; glue spilled onto it stops it working properly.
- Opaque
- Not see-through; hot glue turns milky like this when it is set and cool.
Transcript
So in this video, we're going to show you how to put the antenna on Spout. And this requires a fair amount of precision. So we want to be really careful when we put the hot glue on. But what we've done is we've bent a paperclip out, and you can tell there's a straight side to the paperclip.
And we want to leave one of those sides completely straight, but we're going to bend out the rest of the paperclip and try and get rid of as many of the kinks as we can. But it's important to leave that side, the last little bit straight and not bend it because it'll make it a lot easier to connect.
So it should look about like this when you get done. So we're going to take our Spout bot, we're going to turn it on its side. If you have a partner, they can hold it for you. Otherwise, a roll of tape works well. And you want to make sure that that antenna points straight down.
And we're going to try and line it up on the switch. So we're going to put the paperclip, the straight, smooth, flat part of the paperclip on the switch. And so we're going to hot glue it in place. And it's easy to get too much or too little hot glue on this. So you want to make sure there's enough hot glue to completely cover the paperclip on both sides.
But no more because if you spill hot glue over it, it'll stick on the switch and the switch won't work properly. So you'll need to make sure that it's held in place tightly. And you'll have to hold it for a little while until the glue turns opaque or that milky color and is completely cool.
And then you'll be ready to do the other side the exact same way. And you'll have antennae on your bot. OK. Once you get both of the antennae done, you're going to want to test it out and see how it runs. I've leave the LEDs off for now because we're just interested in looking at how well the bot runs and what it does.
You can see it moves OK. Sort of bumps into things and backs up a little bit. But I think there's probably a way we can optimize it and make it run a little bit better.
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