It would be nice if they showed what the end result would be like. One of the most frustrating things about the maker crowd is that every tutorial ends up painfully explaining breadboard connections - they're not addressing "how to fish" - just show the schematic and teach new comers how to read the schematic and make their own connections on the breadboard. 90% of the tutorials spend painful time showing "connect this pin over here in this breadboard hole". It's like teaching someone how to draw by saying "Draw this line here at 35 degree angle with this amount of pressure and length." The entire video here [1] is just looking at someone put wires together but doesn't show the final product in a satisfactory way. Everyone's breadboard will be unique - you can't follow step by step connections on a breadboard. You can however, just look at the schematic and hook up stuff on your own once you know how 1) breadboard works 2) how to read schematics. Both of these can be offloaded and referred elsewhere and the time spent in the tutorial should be about architecture, explaining the schematic, why is it designed that way, advantages and disadvantages, etc. /rant

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS-QJv-ae3s

This blog post is focused on the Raspberry Pi portion of the build, since it is the Raspberry Pi blog, but it links to the original creator's blog, which is more detailed and has several videos of the robot actually working. Here's a link to the original blog: https://raspibotics.wixsite.com/pibotics-blog/post/02-how-to...

Nice write-up! Getting servos and gears strong enough to jump will be a challenge, but looking forward to seeing what you come up with! I had a project to create a SpotMini from a Mekamon last year- biggest problem I ran into was that the servos could not support the weight of an iPhone- https://medium.com/@zredlined/making-my-own-spot-mini-2-2f12...

Also this one: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/mini-raspberry-pi-boston-dy...

Included video is unsatisfying to me. Here it is actually working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlRV2jX6AY

For anyone without access to a 3D printer, it's worth noting you can go a long way with gluing (laminating) thin strips of wood and even paper into layers in order to create the shapes and structure you want.

Looks similar to a Segway.

The downside of this design is that it has to move in order to stabilize. This means that you can't stabilize near the edge of a cliff.

Who would get close to the edge of a cliff while on a Segway?

Funny you should ask. The owner of Segway fell off a cliff and died. So at least one person.[1]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/segways-owner-killed-after-ridi...

The owner of Segway:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39377851/ns/world_news-europe/t/se...

I cant...

Keep your downward-projected center of mass inside the convex hull described by your feet.

What about the idea of using a cheap hoverboard as a robot platform? Is there a good way to control it without having to lean forward/backward?

Not a bad idea. But I think the issue would be durability and quality of the Chinese parr’s.

his little brother