- Good combination of speed and controllability
- Graphical OLED display
- Full wrap-around bumper to protect electronics from collisions
- Two bump sensors on the front
The Pololu 3pi 32U4 OLED robot is a complete, high-performance mobile platform based on the Arduino-compatible ATmega32U4 MCU. Its many features include dual quadrature encoders for closed-loop speed or position control, line sensors, front bump sensors, a full IMU (3-axis accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyro), and a graphical OLED display, all packed into a robot that fits in the palm of your hand. This Standard Edition version is assembled with 30:1 MP 6V Micro Metal Gearmotors, which offer a good combination of speed and controllability.
The 3pi 32U4 OLED is a versatile, high-performance, user-programmable robot that measures just 9.7 cm (3.8″) in diameter. At its heart is an ATmega32U4 AVR microcontroller from Microchip (formerly Atmel), and like our A-Star 32U4 programmable controllers, the 3pi 32U4 features a USB interface and ships preloaded with an Arduino-compatible bootloader, so all you need to program it is a USB A to Micro-B cable (not included). A software add-on is available that makes it easy to program the robot from the Arduino environment, and we have Arduino libraries and example sketches to help get you started. For advanced users who want to customize or enhance their robots with additional peripherals, the robot’s power rails, power system controls, and microcontroller’s I/O lines can be accessed via several 0.1″-pitch expansion ports
The 3pi (or 3𝜋 ) features two H-bridge motor drivers and a variety of integrated sensors, including a pair of quadrature encoders for closed-loop motor control, a complete inertial measurement unit (3-axis accelerometer, gyro, and magnetometer), five downward-facing reflectance sensors for line-following or edge-detection, and left and right bump sensors along the front face of the robot. Three on-board pushbuttons offer a convenient interface for user input, and a 128×64 graphical OLED display, buzzer, and indicator LEDs allow the robot to provide feedback.
3pi 32U4 versions The original version of the 3pi 32U4 includes an 8×2 character LCD, while this newer 3pi 32U4 OLED incorporates a graphical OLED display instead. The name “3pi 32U4” can generally be used to refer to both the original (LCD) and OLED versions and the documentation in our updated user’s guide covers both versions.
Our Arduino library for the 3pi 32U4 generally allows code written for the LCD version to work on the OLED version with minimal changes (and the reverse is also true as long as your code does not make use of the OLED’s graphical capabilities).