Although Panic has halted development on its official Playdate charging dock, one enterprising character artist has begun work with an open-source kit (via Gizmodo) that turns the device into an interactive robot pet.
The Playbot is the name of Guillaume Locquin’s cute add-on, which anyone with the right know-how can build. (For those who aren’t in the know, don’t be shocked if you eventually see others selling builds on platforms like Etsy.) Built with two wheels, a motor, a microcontroller, and a 3D-printed casing, it uses the Playdate’s built-in accelerometer, microphone, and sensors to turn the indie game console into an engaging desktop companion.
Locquin, who worked as a character artist at Ubisoft, used those skills to bring the device to life. He told Engadget that the console turned out to be a unique creative canvas. “I fell in love with the Playdate console — its unique form factor, the SDK developed by Panic,” he said. “And, of course, its distinctive crank makes it an incredible platform for exploring new possibilities.”
“Like many others, I initially thought about making a charging dock for my Playdate,” Lokin said. “Then I thought: why not add wheels to it? After working in the video game industry for many years, I love combining my gaming expertise with robotics.” His past projects include a wheeled robot (except for the Playdate) and a bipedal humanoid robot that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tim Burton film.
While the Playbot won’t do anything crazy like chat, pop wheelies or play fetch, Lokin’s video below shows it reacting to a wake-up tap, navigating around corners and spinning around when you turn the Playdate’s crank. It can also move around your desk, avoiding obstacles and avoiding falling off ledges.
The developer estimates that one charge provides 45 minutes of play. When you’re not playing with the device (as a game console or robot), the Robo-Dock charges the console.
Lokin told Engadget he started the project in June. He said the hardware phase of development was relatively quick, but the software was more difficult. “Software development proved to be more complex than anticipated, as the robot uses three different codebases: C++ for the microcontroller, Lua for the Playdate application, and Python to export animations from Blender,” he said.
“These three programs need to communicate with each other, which represents a significant amount of code for a single developer.” He found that documenting and formatting the project for an open-source release was more time-consuming than expected.
Lokin told us he’d love to see someone build their own Playbot someday. “That would make all this effort worthwhile,” he said. The developer provides 3D printing instructions, companion app code, and firmware for his Teensy 4.1 microcontroller on GitHub.