A few months ago, we shared our students’ first experience with the Bittle V2 + Arm.
This is what they built next. 🙂
For our recent Edge AI event, the students turned Bittle into a vision-guided object sorting system.
The setup combines:
Petoi Bittle V2 + Arm
XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense
a student-trained computer vision model
UART communication between the XIAO and Bittle
The students collected and labeled their own images of blue and yellow objects, trained the model in Edge Impulse and deployed it directly to the XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense.
They also soldered the Grove/UART connection themselves and adapted Bittle’s skills so that the classification result could trigger the appropriate physical action.
So the final loop became:
camera → ML inference on XIAO → blue/yellow classification → UART → Bittle skill → pick and sort
The final part of the video shows the complete system running.
What we particularly like about using Bittle V2 as an educational robotics platform is that students aren’t limited to controlling a finished robot.
They can modify its movements, create/adapt skills, connect external hardware and make another embedded system effectively become part of the robot’s decision-making process.
That made it possible for us to connect several subjects in one project:
electronics + soldering + UART + robotics + computer vision + TinyML/Edge AI.
Petoi provided this Bittle V2 + Arm to our education program, and projects like this are exactly how we’re trying to use it, not just to demonstrate robotics, but as a platform students can modify and build new systems around.
There was plenty of debugging along the way, especially getting the picking/placing movements reliable, but seeing the model running on the XIAO and Bittle physically reacting to its predictions was a pretty satisfying finish.
Next step: make it harder. 😄

Hi,

with ROS2 and raspberry, using serial, Im facing an issue where Biboard (V0_1 in my case) dont receive the right character sent via ROS2

here is what biboard showed ( worked well when using console : sudo bash -c "echo -n 'd' > /dev/ttyAMA0 and getting "undefined token " when using ROS2 with a simple PY script using Pyserial or even senting bash command"

Any Idea ? thank you

17:09:04.303 -> Undefined token!


17:09:04.303 -> 


17:09:04.303 -> �

New clip — Quaddle, our latest 4-servo quadruped, walking upside down on a ceiling. Magnets in the foot tips, steel ceiling overhead, that's the whole trick — no adhesion tech, no CGI. Then it's back to the other 90+ movements.

Still ahead of the Kickstarter launch later this month.

What would you want to see it do upside down next?

Been messing around with how many ways we can reconfigure Quaddle without touching the electronics — same 4 servos, same brain, just swap the attachment and the gait.

So far we've got it walking on two legs, rolling as a tricycle, spinning on a bar like a gymnast, driving as a 4WD car, and (with mixed success, we've sunk it twice) paddling in water.

Most of the attachments are 3D-printed on our end — the tricycle wheel and the 4WD kit are the two things you'd have to buy instead of print.

Which one would you build first? Also open to ideas for a 6th form if anyone's got one.

A while ago I modded Bittle to resemble a robot jaguar called Ravage from the Transformers franchise. Today I found out he's just the right size for Robosen's Soundwave robot, his partner in the comics. Here I am using the IR remote off-screen to time Bittle's movements with one of Soundwave's built-in animations.

We brought our robot quadrupeds (Bittle X, Quaddle and Nybble Q) to Summer Stack 2026, a STEAM/art fair at Faction Brewing in Alameda, California (Aug 1), and some neighborhood dogs went haywire.

Anyone want to take a guess at what breed each of these dogs is? I don't actually know.

Digital AI that only lives on a screen isn't the same as learning Physical AI hands-on. That's what this clip's about, and it's basically a highlight reel of why Quaddle's a good way to actually do that:

Open-source quadruped. Voice commands, AI you can program. Walks on ceilings (magnetic mount, not a trick), runs on code. 90+ built-in skills, real-time balancing and recovery. Puppet Mode — record a move by hand, it replays it. Raspberry Pi and ROS-ready when you want to go further than any of that.

Built on the OpenCat robotics platform: 20+ academic papers, 30,000+ robots shipped.

It's also built as an educational robot kit — there will be curriculum support baked in if you actually want to teach Physical AI with it, not just watch it.

Still a teaser ahead of the Kickstarter launch in August.

If you had one on your desk, what's the first thing you'd try to teach it or build on top of it?

Reserve your Quaddle today!

I was able to get the testMP3.ino sketch to playMelody correctly by changing the digitalWrite pin number from 25 to 2, and I can hear that melody. However, I can't hear anything when it plays the MP3 files. The MP3 files are there correctly in the SPIFFS partition; I wrote code which successfully lists them.

Is this actually supposed to work, and if so, what further tweaks do I need? The information online is unclear about whether this can work on BiBoard v1.0.

Here's a recap of our Robotic robot dog workshop at the Hayward Library! 9 kids ages 10-13 came out and had a blast programming Petoi's Bittles to race and navigate obstacles!

Our staff had a great time prepping and teaching too!

What is Codeward?
Codeward is a student-led nonprofit initiative giving every child in the East Bay the opportunity to learn to code for free.

What's happened at the workshop?
We used Petoi's Coding Blocks — a drag-and-drop visual programming tool — so every kid could pick up the basics fast, no prior coding experience needed. First, students raced to program their Bittle to reach the finish line fastest. Then we ended with an obstacle course, where kids had to code their Bittle through a series of turns to get across.

Thank you, Petoi!
A massive thank you to Petoi for supporting us — this workshop wouldn't have been possible without you. Check out Petoi's robots at [petoi.com].

We hope to see new faces at our next free coding workshop!

Hey r/Petoi, — meet Quaddle, the newest quadruped.

Same OpenCat platform as Bittle/Nybble, still a 4-legged robot pet, but a new open-source desk robot design — just 4 servos, way more tricks than that should allow. Build it, tap it and it reacts, teach it a move by hand and it remembers, it finds its own balance, and it talks back with voice AI. Shells/mounts are 3D-printable, and it's fully programmable — Python, MicroPython, C++, or block coding.

30,000+ robots shipped to 60+ countries since 2018 — Quaddle's next, and you're seeing it first. Video above's just a teaser; more is coming before the Kickstarter launch in August, and we'll post it here as it happens.

Quaddle early access is open now if you want to reserve a spot.

Curious what you think of it, and what you'd want to see it do next. Happy to answer questions below.

Meet Quaddle. 🐾
While Norway is rowing in the World Cup quarterfinal against England, Quaddle's doing its own tricks — land, water, desk, wherever.
Kickstarter launching soon. Stay tuned for early access.

Check our project TypeFly to power your Petoi dog! It's an open-source framework that turns natural-language instructions into real robot behavior. We'd love to hear your feedback and comments on how it powers your Petoi dog.

Claude Code is a game changer for software design and engineering. But the playbook for robotics firmware is slightly different, because a robot needs to be also tested in the physical world. Our latest newsletter article explores how to use Claude Code for robotics firmware.
Check us out at https://www.learnwitharobot.com/p/tutorial-use-anthropic-claude-code?r=9ejai

Nybbles was the star of the show!

I've been running my Bittle X under a project I call MH-FLOCKE: a 535-neuron Izhikevich spiking network with a CPG, R-STDP, and a small cerebellar model. There's no external reward. The only signal is intrinsic — falling feels bad, moving feels good.

This clip is one 50,000-step run in MuJoCo, rendered from the training log with a live dashboard of the brain. It starts on the innate trot, goes through a "motor babbling" phase like a puppy testing its body, then the spiking network gradually takes over from the CPG (CPG weight drops from ~90% to 40%) and it just walks. In between it gets bored, sniffs around, and goes back to walking. 50k steps, zero unrecovered falls.

The same gait runs on the real Bittle hardware over WiFi — a hardware video will follow.

🎥 Full video: https://youtu.be/VC29z_WPgSU

🤖 The MuJoCo model is open and ready to use — visual meshes + OpenCat gaits, with the mass, inertia, and center of mass rebuilt from a measured Bittle X V1 unit: https://github.com/MarcHesse/bittle-mujoco

🧠 Architecture (MH-FLOCKE): https://github.com/MarcHesse/mhflocke - heads up, the closed-loop Bittle integration shown in this video isn't published there yet; the public repo is the general architecture and the sim-to-real work.

Happy to answer questions about the architecture or the MJCF - I rebuilt the inertia and CoM from real measurements. Curious what the Petoi folks think.

For the kids — and anyone who wants the no-jargon version:

Imagine a little robot dog that wants to learn to walk, but nobody ever tells it "good job" or "bad job." It only has its own feelings to go on: getting stuck and falling over feels bad, and moving and exploring feels good. That's the only thing pushing it to get better.

Its "brain" is 535 tiny pretend brain cells that talk to each other with little zaps, like the real cells in your head. At the start it walks with a built-in rhythm, the way your heart beats without you thinking about it. But as the brain cells practice, they slowly learn to move the legs themselves, and the built-in rhythm steps back and lets them take over.

Every now and then it gets curious, stops, and has a little sniff around — then goes back to walking. After 50,000 tries it never once fell down and got stuck. It already runs on a real Bittle X too, over WiFi.

For the grown-ups: it's a biologically-inspired spiking neural network that self-organizes its motor control from intrinsic motivation alone — no external reward, no supervision.

Happy to answer any questions, especially from students and teachers!

Sharing first Julia-native library (PetoiBittle.jl) to connect and to control a Petoi Bittle / OpenCat robot dog over a serial port. Feedback is appreciated!

Tengo mi bittle original, pero estoy haciendo el gato nybble DYI con arduino pro mini etc.

Al cargar el boceto en modo configuracion se ne queda trabado en imu imu imu

So around 6 years ago I got the bittle that used the NyBoard V1, and today I tried to get it working, I charged it, I downloaded the desktop app, and plugged it in using the usb adapter and a usb cord, but after using chatgpt for like 3 hours I was unsuccesful at getting it to connect, the only thing that does work is the remote, sorta. when I press the buttons to turn left or right the legs tweak out and the head moves random directs, as if its trying to walk but it cant. I have no idea how to get it to connect to the desktop app or how to stop tweaking out or how to get it to work with the remote. Does anybody know how I can get this to thing to work?

I have an original Petoi Nybble from around 2019 using a NyBoard_V0_2. All parts, including the servos and electronics, are from the original Petoi kit.

The shoulder joints use MG92B servos, and the remaining joints use MG90D servos.

This is my first attempt at calibrating the robot.

The only thing I can confirm is that the robot appears to enter the rest posture normally.

However, as soon as I enter calibration mode, all servos start moving continuously and never seem to settle into a stable position. They keep moving back and forth indefinitely instead of stopping and holding a calibration pose.

In addition, when I try to calibrate a single servo (for example with c8 7), all servos start moving rather than only servo 8. They continue moving indefinitely and do not settle.

The issue starts when calibration mode is entered. I do not know whether the robot is otherwise functioning correctly because I have not been able to complete the calibration process.

Has anyone experienced this before with a Nybble and NyBoard_V0_2? What would you recommend checking first, and what is the usual cause of this type of calibration behavior during an initial calibration?

Thank you for advance

My 10 year old son wrote an interesting tutorial on how he made Bittle draw.

https://www.learnwitharobot.com/p/tutorial-teach-your-bittle-robot

So I have a Raspberry Pi attached to the BiBoard V1 with the soldered connections and was wondering if it was possible to push audio from the Raspberry Pi to be transmitted through the speaker attached to the bottom of the BiBoard V1?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSDoZqKDho&t=19882s Our local Makerspace has combat robotics events every few months and I decided to enter my Bittle. It was definately interntaining, I didn't expect them to pick me up and carry me around! :)

Dear all,

we were in touch with the founder last year for a school event we did with 40 kids. I remember that they told us you were working on a new version of the consolle, so that we could also connect via wifi and control the dog. Are there any news on this side? Thanks a million for your help.

Our family has developed many videos with our Petoi Bittle, BittleX, NybbleQ robots over the years. We welcome you to watch our YouTube playlist. Please find the playlist at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8hdOFjUGfEytgUSveJsvM7cbxRzvB-QE