mBot and Lego

Recently I got my Kickstarter-backed mBots from Makeblock, some cute little robots with basically an Arduino-brain.

And as the Kickstarter campaign was successful, I also got one of the nice LED-Matrix displays with it.

Now I wanted to mount the display on the front like they show on some pictures and the range sensor as well. Obviously that does not work as they go into the same place. Unfortunately there was no additional mounting bracket supplied.

Next try was to mount it at the back, but there are no mounting holes with (or without) thread available. Luckily we have a larger Lego collection and the website claims The chassis is compatible with Lego&Makeblock parts. Unfortunately this is not entirely true, as the holes in the mBot chassis are just a bit too small for the normal lego connector pegs or axles.

But don't fear :-)

First, with some M4 screws and nuts it is easy to just mount lego parts with the help of those:

And luckily Lego also supports being mounted with M3 screws and nuts, so I basically created an adapter with some Lego Technic parts:

And finally I was able to mount the display at the back of my mBot:

I saw an image on the forums where someone mounted the display (for my gusto upside down) and the range sensor on top, but I think this way the sensor may be too high up and not find all obstacles.