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My Final Project

This page tracks the development of my final project idea as it evolves through the Fab Academy programme.

Week 1

The Week 1 assignment was to plan and sketch a potential final project.

Final Project Image

Autonomous pen plotter that draws line drawings on an unlimited surface with a pen of your choice. The robot knows its own position by scanning the environment with its camera eyes, so it can draw very precisely. As a hobby sewist, I want to use this little robot to copy sewing patterns, or as a weekend sumi-e painter, I want to copy my draft onto a very large paper with a water-erasable pen.

Week 2

The Week 2 assignment was to model a possible final project in 3D CAD.

After some research, I selected two 28BYJ-48 stepping motors. For my robot camera eyes, I picked the OV2640 module as it seems to go well with ESP32 microcontrollers. I skipped the servo and microcontroller for the time being.

3D CAD of my final project

Week 6

The Week 6 assignment was to design an electronics board.

Our instructor Tamiya-san recommended the dual H-bridge IC DRV8421 for motor control. The microcontroller in the lab inventory is the XIAO RP2040, though for the final project I may switch to another board in the XIAO series depending on the processing requirements.

The next step is to refine the board dimensions to fit within the CAD model of the robot body.

Electronics Design

Week 7

Suddenly it occurred to me that an autonomous portrait drawing robot is also possible.

Another idea Portrait drawing robot that recognizes a human face with its camera eyes, converts the image to line-drawing paths with its microcontroller, and draws portraits with its robot arms.

Reference SCARA draw bot projects

Week 8

On week 8, I milled the board the board

Week 10

In Week 10, I successfully drove two stepper motors and a servo with the board. the board

Copyright 2026 Fumiko Toyoda - Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial
Source code hosted at gitlab.fabcloud.org