Robot Missions Bowie Brain Kit

If you’re an intermediate maker hoping to take your hands-on robotics skills to the next level but aren’t exactly sure how to get started, the Bowie Brain Kit might be just the thing.

Built by Robot Missions the Bowie Brain Kit comes with everything you’ll need to assemble your own “robot brain” including sensors, motor drivers, coin cell battery, speaker, enclosure and a Teensy 3.6 among other smaller but necessary parts like diodes and resistors. Most importantly, the kit comes with full instructions that will walk you through how to assemble the brain including soldering and attaching components to the board.

In the video below, a couple members of the Robot Missions team perform brain surgery on a weather-sensing environmental robot to show how each of the components work together.

Robot Missions⁠—whose self-declared mission is to build low-cost robotics systems for environmental applications⁠—has, among other interesting projects, deployed rover-style versions of robots that use the Bowie brain to clean up public beaches by sifting sand for trash.