[Ogrinz Labs] has built a Robbie the Robot suit, which is super-cool, but has a huge flaw. When inside the suit, he’s too tall to do what the original Robbie actor did, which was to look through the “mouth” grille. He solved this with an inexpensive automotive reversing camera, but then realised its monitor had a built-in on-screen-display chip. After a lot of work, he’s published a GitHub repository that allows access to this thing for custom on-screen graphics.
The chip in question is an AMT630A, which contains video switching hardware, a graphics system for the on-screen-display, and an 8052 microcontroller core. He didn’t manage to get into the 8052’s brain, but the video below details the long path towards controlling it through an I2C port with an ESP32. The software is available as an Arduino library. His intention is to use it as a display for navigational sensor data to aid in maneuvering Robbie.
Given the status of Robbie as a sci-fi movie icon, it should come as no surprise that we’ve featured this suit before,