Overview
Everything MILA does, and a mind you can hear
Follow, hello, dance
She keeps your hand 30 cm from her sonar in short pulses, and shakes her sonar head or dances on the spot.
Three modes
WASD, TANK and OBSTACLE, from the remote, her dashboard on :5013, the Python controller or NORA’s IR link.
Two ways to see a wall
An ultrasonic on a servo looks ahead and to both diagonals, and an infrared sensor says “something’s there”. Either one stops her.
Sixteen LEDs and an OLED
The LEDs are the colour of her thought while she drives; the OLED shows her mode, what’s ahead and what she’s thinking.
A synthesizer brain
Her drives are square-wave oscillators. The loudest is her thought, and the synth plays it.
Hear her anywhere
She has no speaker, so her thought and every beep come over WiFi: LISTEN on her dashboard plays them on your phone, L on the PC controller.
The ladder and the link
She joins the fleet’s network at the very bottom, below MILA, registers with the hub, and NORA can drive her over IR (0x0DA5).
The guard and her PIN
Driven by hand she won’t go into a wall, ticks faster as one gets close, and only an unlocked controller can drive her.
MIND mode
The LLM on her PC controller drives her, one short move at a time — and it feels what her synth brain feels: her thought and its Hz are among its senses. M on the controller.
Hardware
What she's built from
- 01 UNO + WiFi R3 board (ATmega328P + ESP8266), like MILA
- 02 L298N motor driver and a wooden tank chassis (like IDA’s)
- 03 HC-SR04 ultrasonic on a servo
- 04 IR obstacle sensor (on/off)
- 05 16-LED RGB array (WS2812)
- 06 SSD1306 128×32 SPI OLED
- 07 Synthesizer kit (XR2206-style) + MCP41010 digital pot
- 08 IR remote + receiver, buzzer
The synth brain
She thinks in square waves
| Drive | Frequency | What moves it | Exploring, she drives at |
|---|---|---|---|
| calm | 196 Hz | always there, the hum underneath | 80% |
| curious | 220–660 Hz | the way ahead staying open | 100% |
| caution | 220–880 Hz | something getting close; 880 when the IR sensor sees it | 45% |
| social | 523 Hz, fading | hearing NORA over the IR link | 55%, and a hello |
A digital potentiometer sits where the synthesizer kit’s frequency pot was, so NIKA sets its pitch, and with the kit’s square-wave jumper on, what you hear is her thought.
Quick start
Get her thinking
- Copy
scripts/esp8266/secrets.example.htosecrets.h. - Flash
scripts/NIKAto the UNO andscripts/esp8266to the ESP8266, with the DIP switches set for each. - Put the synth kit’s jumper on square wave, and tune
SYNTH_Kby ear. - Power her on and open
http://<her IP>:5013/, or runrun.bat.
WiFi signal
How well she hears the network
Her /status has wifi_rssi (her signal, 0 while she hosts), which RITA’s STATS shows. Her ESP8266 has no Bluetooth: Bluetooth controllers reach her through NORA’s IR link.
Windows app
A native window on NIKA's page
It opens NIKA's own hosted page in a window, so it always looks the same as the page. It remembers the address, and FIND looks on the fleet list of the network you're on. If NIKA doesn't answer, it says so and lets you change the address.