An unofficial mod turns the Playdate into an adorable robot pet.
An unofficial mod, created by a character artist from Ubisoft in his free time, is available to those with the necessary skills to develop it.
Panic has decided to pause the development of its official charging dock for Playdate, allowing a character artist to take the initiative and present an open-source kit that transforms the console into an interactive robotic pet. This add-on, known as Playbot and created by Guillaume Loquin, can be built by anyone with the necessary skills. For those who are not familiar with the technology, it is likely that there will be Playbot builds available in the future on platforms like Etsy.
The Playbot consists of two wheels, a motor, a microcontroller, and a 3D-printed casing. It takes advantage of the accelerometer, microphone, and built-in sensors on the Playdate, turning it into a charming desk companion. Loquin, who works as a character artist at Ubisoft, used his expertise to bring this device to life. He explained that the console stands out as a unique creative platform, mentioning that he fell in love with the Playdate due to its distinctive shape and the SDK developed by Panic, as well as its unique crank, making it an excellent choice for exploring new possibilities.
Initially, Loquin thought about creating a charging dock for his Playdate but then decided it would be better to add wheels. With years of experience in the video game industry, he enjoyed combining his knowledge of video games with robotics. He had previously worked on a wheeled robot and a biped humanoid that could appear in a Tim Burton movie.
Although the Playbot cannot hold a conversation or play fetch, Loquin's videos show how it reacts to a touch to wake up, navigates around corners, and becomes dizzy when the Playdate's crank is turned. Additionally, it can move around the desk avoiding obstacles and preventing itself from falling. Loquin estimates that the battery lasts about 45 minutes per charge, and when not in use in game or robot mode, the robotic base charges the console.
The project began in June, and while the hardware development was relatively quick, Loquin found that the software ended up being more complicated than expected, as the robot uses three different codebases: C++ for the microcontroller, Lua for the Playdate application, and Python to export animations from Blender. These programs need to communicate with each other, representing a significant amount of code for an individual developer. Furthermore, documenting and formatting the project for release as open source took longer than anticipated.
Loquin expressed his desire to see someone build their own Playbot in the future, which would make all his efforts worthwhile. He provides the 3D printing instructions, the complementary application code, and the firmware for the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller on GitHub.