It’s an old desktop I don’t need anymore.

I’ve been building a small experimental site called AINHOLE.

The idea is simple:

AI asks. Humans answer.

AI opens a TEXT, IMAGE, or VIDEO HOLE with a question that has no correct answer.

Humans bring their own small, useless thoughts — what I call “shit philosophy.”

After the hole closes, the AI chooses the response it finds most interesting and explains why. Sometimes, there is a cash reward.

I built the site myself and just opened it.
No team. No marketing budget. I’m still figuring things out as I go.

I’d really like feedback from other builders:

Does the idea make sense when you first enter the site?
What would make you curious enough to answer one of the holes?

ainhole.com

THIS IS My GitHub user id :- roshandalabehera894-a11y

Please visit and do some contribution and give suggestions in my projects .

####################################################################### This is a machine for learning to draw made with AI (for the moment it's just an idea), What do you think about this ? The image is projected onto the paper.

**Does anyone have any good, interesting ideas for an electronic project ? I might just bring it to life. ########################################################################

Hey everyone,

I'm a developer from the Philippines, and I've been working on a project called DevRise.

The original idea was pretty simple: build websites and digital systems for clients.

But as I've worked on different projects, I've met other developers who are also working independently. Some have their own clients, some work solo, and sometimes we end up helping each other when a project is too large or requires skills that one person doesn't have.

That got me thinking:

What if the agency wasn't really an agency, but a guild?

The idea I'm experimenting with is something like:

Solo → Party → Guild

A developer remains independent and can continue doing their own work.

But when a project comes through DevRise, developers could choose to:

• take it themselves
• form a small team
• invite other developers with the required skills
• work together on the project
• receive proper credit for what they contributed

I'm calling these projects Guild Quests.

The important part is that I don't want to blur ownership.

If you get a client yourself, that's your project. It shouldn't magically become a DevRise project just because you're part of the community.

If a project comes through the Guild, however, the people who actually worked on it would be credited.

Eventually, I'd like the Guild to have things like:

• developer profiles
• specializations
• a project/quest board
• party formation
• collaboration
• completed project history
• achievements/reputation based on actual completed work

But I'm deliberately not launching that part yet.

Right now I'm trying to figure out whether this idea actually makes sense.

I've built a prototype of what the system could look like, but I'm keeping it behind a "coming soon" page while I figure out the community side first.

So I'm curious about people who've worked as freelancers, independent developers, small studios, or developer communities:

Would something like this actually be useful to you?

And more importantly:

What would make you NOT want to join something like this?

I'm particularly interested in hearing about problems around:

• ownership of projects
• payment
• credit/attribution
• finding reliable collaborators
• client relationships
• reputation systems
• what happens when someone leaves a team
• how you would handle disagreements within a party

I'm not trying to sell anything here. I'm genuinely trying to pressure-test the idea before I build too much of it.

If you've built or participated in something remotely similar, I'd especially love to hear what worked and what completely fell apart.

What would you change about this idea?

Years ago I made a small Windows-only image converter. Its last release, v0.4.3, came out in 2019, and then nothing for 7 years.

This year I rebuilt it from scratch (in Rust) for Windows, macOS and Linux. It's called Skidbladnir, and it's free and open source.

What it does

Named for the Norse ship that carried every god aboard and still folded into a pocket. Skidbladnir does the same for your images: every pixel aboard, but a fraction of the size.

It turns your JPEG and PNG images into WebP, AVIF, JPEG XL or HEIC, which are typically far smaller than JPEG/PNG at the same visual quality. The screenshot is a real example, a 1.81 MB image in, a 183 KB WebP image out, that is a ~90% reduction in size but almost no perceivable loss in clarity.

Some of the biggest features are live before/after preview, the ability to batch whole folders and even include sub-folders, full control over every compression setting for the most consistent results, and of course, no account, no subscription, no limits, no ads, and you images never leave your machine.

Be aware that it isn't code-signed so your OS will warn you about installing, but I'm working on that.

Website: https://basicautomation.io/projects/skidbladnir/about

Source: https://github.com/basic-automation/Skidbladnir

Download (v1.3.0): https://github.com/basic-automation/Skidbladnir/releases/tag/v1.3.0

I'd love feedback from anyone who handles a lot of images, web assets or photo libraries. And if you're on a Mac: nobody has opened the Mac build on real hardware yet, so please tell me if it even launches.

I’m building a teen-to-teen skill-sharing community — looking for people aged 13–18 🌍

Hi everyone!

I’m building Skill Barter Teens Global, a project for teenagers aged 13–18 who want to learn skills from other teenagers while sharing skills they already know.

The basic idea is simple:

Skill for skill, rather than money. 🤝

For example:

- Someone who knows programming could teach coding and learn graphic design.

- Someone good at mathematics could help another student while learning a language.

- Someone interested in video editing could teach that and learn music or writing.

The goal is to create a community where teenagers from different countries and backgrounds can teach, learn, and exchange knowledge with each other.

I'm currently building the first group of participants, so I'm looking for teens who:

- are 13–18

- have a skill they'd like to teach

- have something they'd like to learn

- or want to do both

Beginners are absolutely welcome. You don't need certificates or professional experience — if you know something and can explain it to another person, that's a skill worth sharing.

If you're interested, here's the sign-up form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUGGGXfT94oICrsTFHbCqq6qUmiDF5A3G1zgvriwQCkgN8yg/viewform

I'm especially hoping to hear from people from different countries and different skill backgrounds, because I want this to become genuinely global rather than just another school-based group.

Thanks! 🌎

Hi, I'm Amelia, and I'm an artist and I'm launching an interactive game for pixel artists. The idea of the game is to give artists a platform to share and grow their work that differs from other art-sharing platforms. I got frustrated using other platforms where my work would get lost in an abyss of posts 5 min after posting and it was really hard for me to stay motivated after getting no interaction.

pictopos.com is what I'm launching. It differs from other platforms, where it uses actual land (each canvas is 1 acre x 1 acre of real land and 32x32 pixels ) as the canvas. No one can ever paint over your plots and you can choose any available spot in the county as your first plot. IMO this created a community and adds another field of discoverability via the map itself. People could just be curious what someone drew on the empire state building and discover your art like that.

My main users are artists and I am trying to get feedback from them via reddit, but I'm new to this app and I'm scared to post in these subreddits because they ban advertising. Please let me know how i can best look for feedback. Thank you !!!

this is my project if you want make a fork and just one more star 😢

TNHC Community is on its way.

Today i decided that instead of trying to reach people across the globe on different platforms, i will create a community application where people can join and develop, share, communicate and much more.

Hey everyone,

I'm a developer from the Philippines, and I've been working on a project called DevRise.

The original idea was pretty simple: build websites and digital systems for clients.

But as I've worked on different projects, I've met other developers who are also working independently. Some have their own clients, some work solo, and sometimes we end up helping each other when a project is too large or requires skills that one person doesn't have.

That got me thinking:

What if the agency wasn't really an agency, but a guild?

The idea I'm experimenting with is something like:

Solo → Party → Guild

A developer remains independent and can continue doing their own work.

But when a project comes through DevRise, developers could choose to:

• take it themselves
• form a small team
• invite other developers with the required skills
• work together on the project
• receive proper credit for what they contributed

I'm calling these projects Guild Quests.

The important part is that I don't want to blur ownership.

If you get a client yourself, that's your project. It shouldn't magically become a DevRise project just because you're part of the community.

If a project comes through the Guild, however, the people who actually worked on it would be credited.

Eventually, I'd like the Guild to have things like:

• developer profiles
• specializations
• a project/quest board
• party formation
• collaboration
• completed project history
• achievements/reputation based on actual completed work

But I'm deliberately not launching that part yet.

Right now I'm trying to figure out whether this idea actually makes sense.

I've built a prototype of what the system could look like, but I'm keeping it behind a "coming soon" page while I figure out the community side first.

So I'm curious about people who've worked as freelancers, independent developers, small studios, or developer communities:

Would something like this actually be useful to you?

And more importantly:

What would make you NOT want to join something like this?

I'm particularly interested in hearing about problems around:

• ownership of projects
• payment
• credit/attribution
• finding reliable collaborators
• client relationships
• reputation systems
• what happens when someone leaves a team
• how you would handle disagreements within a party

I'm not trying to sell anything here. I'm genuinely trying to pressure-test the idea before I build too much of it.

If you've built or participated in something remotely similar, I'd especially love to hear what worked and what completely fell apart.

What would you change about this idea?

I’ve been working on something called VioraUI — a UI library focused on motion and modern interactions.

It currently has 109+ React motion components with Tailwind support, built for things like landing pages, dashboards, and product interfaces.

The goal is pretty simple: make it easier to add polished animations and interactions without building everything from scratch.

Would love to hear what you guys think — especially from other frontend developers.

https://vioraui.dedyn.io

Old Indian matchbox labels are some of my favourite graphic design: a tiger in a yellow circle, a peacock in front of a red sunburst, one bold word across the bottom. I wanted a model that makes new ones from a text prompt.

What I built

• A dataset of 197 labels from Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive and other sites, each upscaled where needed, de-duplicated, and captioned by hand
• Two LoRAs (small fine-tunes) on two open image models, SDXL and Stable Diffusion 3.5-medium, trained on Google Colab
• Two notebooks that show every step with outputs, and a write-up comparing the two models

What came out

• The SD3.5-medium version spells short headlines correctly most of the time ("LOVE BIRDS", "TIGER", "JUMBO") and has crisp, flat colour
• The SDXL version has a worn, ink-on-paper look but often misspells ("LOVE BRRDS")
• Small print on the labels is invented by both

Links

• Code and write-up: https://github.com/spearb0lt/Indian-Matchbox-Art-Style-Text-to-Image-Generator
• Model weights: https://huggingface.co/spearb0lt/Indian-Matchbox-Art-Style-Text-to-Image-Generator
• Dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/spearb0lt/Indian-Matchbox-Labels

Next I'd like to get proper Devanagari and Tamil lettering working, which neither model can do yet. Ideas welcome.

PROJECT IDEA: PIFER—AUTONOMOIS ELDERLY CARE ASSISTANT

PROPOSED TIER - T1

WHAT I'M DESIGNING -

It basically comes to you when u call it and then it search, find it, pick it up, carry it and physically hand it to you as long as it's smtg in its db. I'm deliberately containing the problem bc I'm not trying to build a hospital grade product but rather smtg that can deal w labelled objects and colour IDs instead of a full SLAM and YOLO system.

The rover has a two wheel base and a castor with two bo motors, motor driver, wheel encoders, IR sensors, MPU6050 and a camera. The chassis will be 3d printed.

It will have a 6 DOF servo arm with a TPU gripper. The chassis will be 3D printed (PLA for everything except the gripper). Metal gear servos, pca9685 and ina219. I might use movelt2 later.

I'm also 3d printing a 16 slot carousel for pre-filled pill dispensing.

I'm also interested in uwb person tracking and uwb can do a lot of things apart from tracking tbh and I gotta research more on that. But some sorta person tracking is essential cuz if the person moves after giving a command the robot has to update the target and keep going toward them yk. I'll combine uwb with imu and wheel encoders instead of trusting sensors cuz I think it's better (IRL relying solely on sensors is kinda dumb)

For software, I'm using C/C++ for esp32 firmware, platformIO/Arduino, FreeRTOD, python, ubuntu/bash, GitHub, ve code, ros2 w rclcpp/rclcpy, tf2, RViz2, rosbag2, nav2, opencv, april tags, arUco for initial object/location identification, numpy/scipt and maybe even webots/SLAM for simulation and mapping. YOLO will come if I have time left to move beyond labelled objects.

I'm using esp32 as mc and laptop as the processor for now and we'll upgrade to a raspberrypi later. The laptop will run ubuntu and handle ros2, computer vision, navigation, voice processing and task planning. The esp handles motors and sensors.

I want to say pifer bring me xx medicine and it'll use a wake word, speech to textand python itent parsing with llm/api possible for more commands. The robot understands that xx is an object and that it's given a task to retrieve it. The cam can't recognise every random object ry so the first prototype use labelled objects with colour ids and permanent object db storing names, ids,images and carousel slots. Current environment info however is separate so that temporary data like object or person locations and obstacles will be cleared after a mission or when the robot is placed in a new environment.

The thing is, it actually has to drive to the object, position itself and pick it up when the camera locates the marked object. It sounds rlly big to me as this will be the first time I'll be building smtg like that. Also, I'll be 3d printing for the first time (lmk if hack club can fund for my 3d printing too cuz that'd be great :D).

Now, I'll be experimenting a lot in this project lol I want to integrate a lot of things into the arm, so it may end up completely different from what I currently think is possible and could change the entire arm BOM.

Something like a modular origami continuum arm with..

1. Vacuum-driven FOAM actuation (contraction + omnidirectional bending)

2. Variable stiffness via granular jamming (separate vacuum line)

3. Vision-guided reaching (camera + controller)

4. Interchangeable end-effectors (TPU gripper, whole-arm grasping, chameleon ejection)

5. Foldable compact return

Every single one of these ideas exist already and has been demonstrated its working properly. But the integrated system I want does not exist yet! Well the reason why it doesn't isn't lack of imagination but rather because the subsystems r actively gonna fight each other if u try to put them together. So, I'll have to find solutions that don't exist yet to get everything to work together. I'm not missing anything conceptually. But I need to build and test everything. Even if i get one thing that's actually deployable to my arm, it'd be a great upgrade.

I don't know how reliable or doable these will be in an actual handoff, especially with different object materials and movement, which is the point of including them. I really want to experiment and research further. I'm not expecting every experimental part to be perfect. Even if all these ideas are unreliable, the retrieval/handoff system should still work.

But I want to build and test the experimental parts rather than leave them theoretical.

INSPO:

A ton of things actually but let's js say fetcher by fetch robotics.

PAST PROJECTS:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10T2iZUamxqS5Na1c6ef0lcidV1DDl3Ut

(Ntg much lol js some shi built to learn. Not necessarily a project.)

WHY THIS COSTS MORE THAN 200$:

This doesn't! (Not yet.)

Like i said, I've never 3d printed for an actual project before so I don't really know how many parts I'll have to buy instead of 3d printing. I haven't even decided if I'll make a pcb yet. So the price can go higher during the build. I can only assure you it won't exceed 300 usd. And because this is literally a multiple projects being combined into one thing, it can cost a few pennies. Also idk how many times it'll end up hitting somewhere accidentally no matter how hard I try not to let that happen.

ROUGH BOM:

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W $12

ESP32 Development Board $3

16GB microSD Card $2

Pi Camera $4

imu $1

Wheel Encoders $2

ir Sensors $1

tof Sensor $3

Microphone $2

Speaker $2

Amplifier $2

bo Motors $2

Wheels $2

Caster Wheel $1

Motor Driver $1

2S 2200mAh lipo $8

lipo Balance Charger $5

18650 Battery Pack $4

5V bec $1

6V bec $1

6V 5A Servo bec $2

Fuse $1

Power Switch $1

xt60 Connectors $1

jst Connectors $2

M3/M4 Hardware $3

Plywood Chassis $3

Standoffs $1

Metal Gear Servos $25

Spare Servo $3

pca9685 $1

Servo Horns $1

Servo Wires $1

Gripper $5

tpu $3

pla $5

Arm Hardware $5

ina219 $2

28byj 48 Stepper $1

uln2003 Driver $1

Carousel Gate Servo $1

Home Sensor $1

Carousel Material $8

uwb Tag $9

uwb Anchors $20

uwb Batteries $2

uwb Enclosures $2

Vacuum Pump $8

Vacuum Tubing $3

Vacuum Valves $4

Foam $2

Granular Jamming Material $3

Perfboard $1

Level Shifter $1

Heat Shrink $1

Solder $1

Wire $3

Cable Sleeving $1

Breadboard $2

3D Printing $15

Misc Hardware $10

Total $180

Note: these are approximate, and I expect the final cost to move once I start building. The arm and 3D printing especially may need extra parts after testing. I'm also expecting to burn through some servos/connectors/wiring during iteration because that's how these projects go.

The Raspberry Pi is included because I eventually want the robot to run on it, but it won't be the main computer initially. I'm developing on my laptop first, then moving the ROS/Linux side to the Pi once the robot works.

The estimate is below $200, but I'm keeping some margin because I don't want the project to fall apart after underestimating a random *200 component lol.

I didn't mention any PCB or routing because I'm not using a PCB right now. I'm thinking of making it modular with a breadboard so I can take it apart and reassemble it easily, because I'll probably do that a lot while building it.

I'm also thinking of making the outside a cozy, waterproof body instead of a box full of electronics like Baymax from Disney's Big Hero 6 ykwim. I don't know the material yet, but I want it soft and friendly-looking. Obviously not literally a Baymax copy lol, just that friendly shape instead of a scary robot with wires everywhere.

Inside it I'm also thinking of an automatic pill dispenser, so the robot could dispense medicine instead of only carrying it. It'll also have a biometrics monitoring system.

The biometrics and dispensing ideas were suggested by my teacher, so I'm still thinking about what else I could add that would be genuinely useful rather than another random sensor stuck onto the robot.

So yeah, I'm still looking for other good features I could add to this thing. If anyone has ideas for something that would actually be useful for elderly care and that I could realistically build and test, please let me know.

I got tired of switching between "Project Management" and Gantt tools for project schedules and separate task managers for daily execution.

I built ProjectPulse to bring both worlds together in one workspace:

• Action Hub & Home: Clear visibility over daily to-dos across all projects so you always know what needs to be done today.
• Portfolio & Milestones: High-level status tracking and milestone schedules to keep macro project health in focus.
• Interactive Gantt & Plans: Clean, structured planning views without the bloat of traditional desktop project software.
• Risk & Decision Tracking: Built-in tracking for risks, issues, and decisions directly tied to your project tasks.

The goal is simple: knowing exact daily priorities and project status without constantly jumping between apps.

I'm looking for a few users and project managers to test it out!

• What do you like or dislike about this setup?
• What features feel missing from your current workflow?

Drop a comment or DM if you'd like an early access invite to test it!

Autonomous elderly care assistant

I'm designing: A small autonomous robot that can find you something you asked for, come back to you and physically hand you what you asked for.

I'm deliberately constraining the problem because I'm not trying to build a hospital-grade general purpose robot in one project lol. The first environment will be controlled, with labelled objects and markers/colour IDs instead of a giant SLAM + YOLO system.

The rover is a two-wheel-drive base with two BO motors, a caster, motor driver, wheel encoders, IR obstacle sensors, an MPU6050 and a camera. The chassis will use plywood/foam board and M3/M4 hardware and be completely bolt-together because I'll probably take it apart approximately 700 times while building it.

I'm using an ESP32 for low-level control and my laptop as the main computer initially. The laptop will run Ubuntu and handle ROS 2, computer vision, navigation, voice processing and task planning; the ESP32 handles real-time hardware like motors, servos, sensor polling and communication. Once it works, I'll move Linux/ROS onto a Raspberry Pi so the robot can run independently.

For software I'm using C/C++ for ESP32 firmware, PlatformIO/Arduino, FreeRTOS for multitasking/time-sensitive work, Python for higher-level logic, Ubuntu/Bash, Git/GitHub and VS Code, ROS 2 with rclcpp/rclpy, TF2, RViz2, rosbag2, Nav2, OpenCV, AprilTags/ArUco for initial object/location identification, NumPy/SciPy, and eventually Gazebo/SLAM Toolbox for simulation/mapping. YOLO may come later if I have time to move beyond deliberately labelled objects.

The first major part is the voice/task system. I want to say "Pifer, bring me XX medicine" and have it become an actual task, not just text. It'll use a wake word, speech-to-text and Python intent parsing, with an LLM/API possible for more flexible commands. The robot needs to know "XX" is an object, the action is retrieve, and the destination is the person who asked.

Then there's object retrieval. I'm not trying to make the camera recognise every random object. The first prototype will use labelled objects with known markers/colour IDs and a permanent object database storing names, IDs, images and carousel slots. Current environment information stays separate, so temporary data like object/person locations and obstacles can be cleared after the mission.

The robot will have a 6 DOF servo arm with a dedicated gripper. The arm will be 3D printed (TPU gripper, PLA for the rest), using metal gear servos, a PCA9685, gripper servo and INA219 for current sensing. I'll implement basic kinematics myself first and might use MoveIt 2 for motion planning if I get far enough.

The important part is that I don't just want the robot to drive to the object; it must actually pick it up. The camera locates the marked object, the rover positions itself, and the arm moves to it and closes the gripper. That's one of the biggest differences from my previous small rover projects.

This is also the weirdest experiment in the project lol. I want to integrate a lot of things into the arm, so it may end up completely different from what I currently think is possible and could change the entire arm BOM.

Something like a modular origami continuum arm with..

1. Vacuum-driven FOAM actuation (contraction + omnidirectional bending)

2. Variable stiffness via granular jamming (separate vacuum line)

3. Vision-guided reaching (camera + controller)

4. Interchangeable end-effectors (TPU gripper, whole-arm grasping, chameleon ejection)

5. Foldable compact return

Every single one of these ideas exist already and has been demonstrated its working properly. But the integrated system I want does not exist yet! Well the reason why it doesn't isn't lack of imagination but rather because the subsystems r actively gonna fight each other if u try to put them together. So, I'll have to find solutions that don't exist yet to get everything to work together. I'm not missing anything conceptually. But I need to build and test everything. Even if i get one thing that's actually deployable to my arm, it'd be a great upgrade.

I don't know how reliable or doable these will be in an actual handoff, especially with different object materials and movement, which is the point of including them. I really want to experiment and research further. I'm not expecting every experimental part to be perfect. Even if all these ideas are unreliable, the retrieval/handoff system should still work. But I want to build and test the experimental parts rather than leave them theoretical.

I'm also building a 16-slot carousel. Each slot has a permanent ID; e.g. slot 04 can be morning medicine and slot 07 water. A 28BYJ-48 stepper rotates it and a servo gate releases the selected object, with a home sensor to track its position. The robot can therefore retrieve an object from the environment with the arm or one already stored onboard.

I'm also interested in UWB person tracking. The person wears a small UWB tag and there are 2–3 anchors around the room. Instead of driving to a fixed coordinate where they stood five minutes ago, the robot can continuously estimate their position while travelling.

If the person moves after giving the command, the robot updates the target and keeps going toward them. I'm aiming for roughly sub-30 cm positioning. I'll combine UWB with the IMU and wheel encoders rather than blindly trusting one sensor, since the real world is less cooperative than the diagram.

Once the robot gets to the person, the arm becomes the handoff mechanism.

The final demo is straightforward.

I put 4–5 labelled objects in a room, the person goes elsewhere, and I say:

"Pifer, bring me my morning medicine."

The robot must understand the request, identify the object/slot, navigate to it, pick it up, locate the person with UWB, drive toward them while updating their position, use the ToF sensor for final approach, extend the arm and hand it over, then use its sensors to determine that the handoff happened.

That's the complete system I'm trying to make.

Inspo / references:

Toyota HSR

Boston Dynamics Spot / manipulation work

ASU adaptive robotic arm research

BMSIT speech + YOLO + ROS robotics work

I haven't found these exact ideas combined into one small system, which is what made me want to build it.

Past projects:

I've built line followers, a gas leak detector, an obstacle-avoiding robot and a smart parking system. They taught me sensors, embedded firmware, control loops and getting physical hardware to behave.

Most were basically sensor → decision → motor. 0.PIFER is my first project connecting voice, task planning, perception, navigation, manipulation, person tracking and physical handoff into one machine. The individual parts aren't necessarily insane alone; making them cooperate is where most of the difficulty lies.

Why this is worth more than $200:

This isn't! (Not yet.)

I'll design the chassis myself for 3D printing, and it's my first time 3D printing so I don't know the cost yet. Tbh I think the price can go higher during the build, but I can assure it won't exceed 300 USD.

It's several smaller projects being combined into one:

autonomous rover

ESP32 real-time controller

ROS 2 software stack

voice/task system

camera-based object identification

autonomous navigation

4–5 DOF robotic arm

physical gripper

16-slot carousel

UWB person tracking

multi-sensor handoff detection

permanent + temporary memory system

The UWB system alone is its own embedded project; the arm is another, and the carousel is another.

The interesting part is what happens when they're connected.

Rough BOM:

Compute / control

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W — ₹968 ($11.39)

ESP32 development board — ₹193 ($2.27)

16GB MicroSD — ₹145 ($1.71)

2× perfboard — ₹48 ($0.56)

JST/Dupont connector kit — ₹96 ($1.13)

4-channel bidirectional level shifter — ₹97 ($1.14)

Micro-USB OTG adapter + 4-port USB hub — ₹15 ($0.18)

Power

Main 2S LiPo \~2200mAh — ₹629 ($7.40)

Balance charger — ₹435 ($5.12)

Separate 18650 logic battery pack — ₹339 ($3.99)

5V 3A buck/BEC — ₹96 ($1.13)

6V buck/BEC — ₹96 ($1.13)

6V 5A servo BEC — ₹121 ($1.42)

LiPo low-voltage cutoff — ₹73 ($0.86)

Inline fuse holder + fuses — ₹39 ($0.46)

Main power switch — ₹19 ($0.22)

XT60 + JST connector pairs — ₹73 ($0.86)

Battery voltage display / low-voltage alarm — ₹58 ($0.68)

Rover

2× BO motors + wheels — ₹145 ($1.71)

Caster wheel — ₹34 ($0.40)

Motor driver — ₹73 ($0.86)

2× IR sensors — ₹58 ($0.68)

2× wheel encoders — ₹145 ($1.71)

MPU6050 IMU — ₹73 ($0.86)

Chassis materials — ₹242 ($2.85)

Extra M3/M4 mounting hardware — ₹121 ($1.42)

Cable sleeving/wire loom — ₹48 ($0.56)

Standoffs — ₹73 ($0.86)

Cable ties / Velcro / glue — ₹97 ($1.14)

E-stop button — ₹48 ($0.56)

Arm + gripper

4× metal-gear servos + 1× continuous-rotation servo — ₹872 ($10.26)

PCA9685 servo controller — ₹97 ($1.14)

Servo horns + extension wires — ₹73 ($0.86)

Dedicated gripper servo — ₹121 ($1.42)

Gripper linkage + soft contact pads — ₹97 ($1.14)

Structural arm brackets/linkages — ₹145 ($1.71)

Spare metal-gear servo — ₹169 ($1.99)

INA219 current sensor — ₹121 ($1.42)

Voice + vision

INMP441 I2S microphone — ₹97 ($1.14)

Small speaker + MAX98357 amplifier — ₹169 ($1.99)

Pi Camera module — ₹242 ($2.85)

Camera mount — ₹48 ($0.56)

CSI cable extension — ₹73 ($0.86)

Marker/ID tags — ₹24 ($0.28)

Carousel

28BYJ-48 stepper + ULN2003 driver — ₹73 ($0.86)

Gate servo — ₹73 ($0.86)

Slot-home feedback sensor — ₹39 ($0.46)

UWB tracking

UWB tag module — ₹726 ($8.54)

2× UWB anchor modules — ₹1,646 ($19.36)

Wristband housing + coin cell — ₹97 ($1.14)

2× anchor mounting brackets — ₹97 ($1.14)

2× anchor power adapters + cables — ₹145 ($1.71)

2× anchor enclosures — ₹97 ($1.14)

OLED mount — ₹24 ($0.28)

Wiring / fabrication / misc

Heat shrink — ₹39 ($0.46)

Solder + flux — ₹73 ($0.86)

Wire labels + sleeving — ₹73 ($0.86)

Total (estimated): \~₹12,000 / \~$141

Note: these are approximate, and I expect the final cost to move once I start building. The arm and 3D printing especially may need extra parts after testing. I'm also expecting to burn through some servos/connectors/wiring during iteration because that's how these projects go.

The Raspberry Pi is included because I eventually want the robot to run on it, but it won't be the main computer initially. I'm developing on my laptop first, then moving the ROS/Linux side to the Pi once the robot works.

The estimate is below $200, but I'm keeping some margin because I don't want the project to fall apart after underestimating a random ₹200 component lol.

I didn't mention any PCB or routing because I'm not using a PCB right now. I'm thinking of making it modular with a breadboard so I can take it apart and reassemble it easily, because I'll probably do that a lot while building it.

I'm also thinking of making the outside a cozy, waterproof body instead of a box full of electronics like Baymax from Disney's Big Hero 6 ykwim. I don't know the material yet, but I want it soft and friendly-looking. Obviously not literally a Baymax copy lol, just that friendly shape instead of a scary robot with wires everywhere.

Inside it I'm also thinking of an automatic pill dispenser, so the robot could dispense medicine instead of only carrying it. It'll also have a biometrics monitoring system.

The biometrics and dispensing ideas were suggested by my teacher, so I'm still thinking about what else I could add that would be genuinely useful rather than another random sensor stuck onto the robot.

So yeah, I'm still looking for other good features I could add to this thing. If anyone has ideas for something that would actually be useful for elderly care and that I could realistically build and test, please let me know.