Episode: 3026
Title: HPR3026: Hex Bug and Battle Bots
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3026/hpr3026.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 15:23:27

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3126 for Monday the 9th of March 2020.
Today's show is entitled, Hexbug and Battle Bots. It is hosted by operator
and is about 19 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summer is
review, mods of fun Hexbug and Battle Bots.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code
HPR15. That's HPR15.
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Music
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode Hacker Public Radio.
Today I'm going to be talking about these Hexbug things robots.
So if you know I have no interest in little kid child robots at Hexbug's Battle Bots,
probably isn't for you. So they're fun to play with.
I got a five year old who enjoys them.
And the original ones I'll go through which ones we've gotten over time here.
And if you're not familiar with Battle Bots, it's a pretty fun show.
I think it's everybody who tends to like it.
So it's kind of for all ages. But you know, people build these robots and sometimes
they'll get schools to sponsor them and sometimes they're the ringers where
they have unlimited funding and they can make everything out of
$100,000 machines to make their parts and stuff.
So anyways, they come with these Hexbug is the brand.
Now Hexbug originally I think started out as these little vibrating things that vibrate around.
And then they you fight them. And those are pretty fun.
But children don't last that long with them. At least my five year old doesn't.
Five year old boy doesn't.
Now these, you'll excuse my voice I got.
Some congestion still all recovering from holiday Christmas sicknesses.
So the comes with these little IR based remotes.
There's four channels. So you can only have four to time in one room basically.
You could do more than one obviously, but you can't have them that works over LiDAR,
which is like your remote, right? Or IR infrared.
And so the little tiny things they take be batteries. You can buy be batteries online.
Their real name is LR44s or LR41s. LR44s are B button batteries commonly.
So there are lots of universal. They work whatever.
So whatever remote works with whatever Battlebot or Hexbug.
So you want to have spare batteries on hand.
Of the B buttons takes two of them.
It's fairly difficult to test the batteries for these.
You can buy cheap battery testers that are analog based where it's got a little temperature reader for the lack of a better term.
It's a spring loaded thing. So when it gets the current, the analog thing will tell you if it's green or red or yellow.
It doesn't pick up enough voltage for it to tell whether or not these are good.
So you kind of have to just, you know, when it goes bad and doesn't work, then you know it's bad.
You can also test by using a camera. So you can test any LiDAR based or light based emitter with a camera.
And you can look at it and you'll see a blinking.
And if you see that blinking, then you know it's partially at least it's getting voltage enough to blink and make light.
But maybe not enough to reach the TV or reach the Hexbug.
So I'll go over these. I've got like five of them now. I don't even know.
We're probably done with them.
The first one we have here is a witch doctor.
And it was the original witch doctor. The new ones are a little bit different.
But the idea here is they have little plastic pieces on them.
So when you run into them or smash them or whatever, they come off.
Now there's some modifications I made to this witch doctor.
When I first got it, the witch doctor has a spinner on the front, a little plastic spinner that weighs a fair amount.
And that's the idea is that it's supposed to have weight to it.
If you really wanted to be cool, you could put a drill hole in there and put like a little weight in there, a piece of metal or like a neodymium magnet thing and weigh it down a little bit.
If I had a little bit more weight to it, that would not actually be kind of cool if these spinners had more weight to them.
But the problem with this one is that it's a gear driven spinner on the front.
And it was too squished together. So all the parts got squished together basically with the gear.
And it wasn't able to spin very freely, making it less effective.
And I mean it was basically like the difference between this on spinning it right now.
That's kind of how it first started out.
And then now you spin it and it spins for three or four times as long.
So I'm not taking this one apart.
I think partially, let me see.
I want to say I took this one apart but I ended up actually just bending the plastic and pulling it apart
to give it some space.
And then I put some silicone in there and stuff like that.
You want to make sure you don't get a hair and things like that.
They're very sturdy. We've had this one for a long time.
So they're very sturdy and they stay together.
As far as modifications, we don't do anything else with this one.
You know, it stays together and falls apart pretty good.
And it's a pretty fair bot.
They take three double a's, two to three double a's or triple a's.
And so this one is pretty slick.
I like it.
It spins good.
That's the witch doctor, the first gen kind of witch doctor.
Then we started getting into randomness.
We got a hex bug.
This is a little spider guy.
And he has an IR emitter on him, I think.
And a receiver.
So you can essentially shoot the other bugs.
So if you get more than one of these little spider bugs,
you can, they have, how many licks of spiders have six legs.
And they walk around and you can turn the turret.
It's kind of a turnip base.
You can hear me turning.
So this one has at least one motor, if not two.
A lot of them have at least two motors in them.
So you got an up and down angler to get it to walk.
It's got a little motion-based gear.
And this one's fallen over, been thrown around.
I will say these are very, very rugged.
I wouldn't let your child do anything crazy with them,
but they're more rugged than I would assume that they are.
So they've been around for a while.
They're pretty rugged.
Anyways, I can ramble too much.
But it's like an IR base, the little game,
and you can turn them on.
Actually, the batteries are dead on this one, it feels like.
But the B button battery, so you don't really have to do the hole,
take the batteries out, because they're just not enough voltage
to make a big mess in there.
But your bigger batteries, you know,
double A's and even triple A's can cause issues
when you leave them in there too long.
So that one's pretty cool, except we don't have two spiders.
So now you either have to get rid of the spider
or buy two spiders, whatever.
Same for this guy.
We got them both at the same time.
This is a little soccer based.
So it comes with a little magnetic soccer ball.
It's actually kind of cool when you,
it's got a little articulator that jumps the,
if I can do it, actually.
There's a button on the top that usually,
on the top of the remote, that usually does whatever the action is.
So if the action is to turn on a spinner
or to rotate your head or something or something like that,
that's how it, that's what the top button is for on the remote.
But anyways, it comes with a little magnetic ball,
which is really cool.
And you kind of play soccer with it, right?
And they have different plates you can swap the plates out for the top.
And then you hit this little thing switch,
and then it flicks it, and then you hit this switch again,
and it primes it to be stuck back on there with the little magnet.
So the idea is you get two of these,
two or more of these, and you play soccer with it.
I actually think the soccer is kind of the coolest
as far as like whatever,
because the battle bots have different stencil strengths,
basically, for like a better turn,
are different parts on them,
and they fall off easier, harder,
or whatever.
This one's more of a fair game.
So if you really wanted to get into it,
this little soccer game is actually kind of cool.
I'd get, you know, like two or three of these,
two or four of these, and then, you know,
have it at a party or something.
You need a flat surface.
We have tile, and it's not,
it's too much for the tile,
uneven tile, and it doesn't like that very well,
so you want to like a nolium surfaces best,
because the nolium grips to the rubber wheels.
But the little soccer thing is cool.
I wish we had two of these, two or three of these,
there are two or four of these,
to play with.
Let's see what else do we get.
Minotaur is my favorite in the battle bot scene.
It has, let's see,
the witch doctor has three pieces.
The top plate and two side plates that fall off,
so basically you get three lives.
Same thing with the minotaur.
It's magnetic, so there's these little metal plates
that stick to each motor.
So there's motors for the rear wheels.
Each rear wheel, it looks like, possibly.
No, these aren't metal motors, they're just pieces of metal.
So there's a motor for the driver for the wheels,
and then there's a driver for the,
I think there's two motors for each wheel,
one motor for each wheel.
And then the spinner is driven by a different motor.
Let me pull the plate off here.
Yeah, three motors.
So it's like dried dual drive.
And then the front motor is for the spinner,
and it has this little,
little pulley-based spinner,
which I've started to see more instead of the gear-based spinners.
So the minotaur is actually pretty cool.
It has a decent hit box and all that stuff.
For the lack of a better term.
Three pieces, just like the witch doctor.
So this one's pretty fair,
and then the other pieces fall off pretty good.
And the ones you got for Christmas,
it's part of a set.
This guy is, I don't even know the name of this guy,
blacksmith.
This one is a hammer,
and it has a gear-based hammer on it.
And it goes smack-smack.
And it's got some pretty good force to it.
And then it has two plates,
one on the top,
two plates on the top,
and a scooper,
or a digger,
or what do they call them, a wedge,
or whatever on the front.
The problem with the wedge on the front
is that when we got it,
it's very, it's very hard to pull off.
So the idea is that it's supposed to, you know,
take damage, right?
So the top plates kind of come off reasonably,
but the front plate was nearly impossible to take off.
So I just took a dremel tool to it,
took some sandpaper,
a dremel tool, a sandpaper,
and filed it down.
So, you know, it doesn't.
The idea is I have it just so where I can kind of hold itself up
by the piece.
Just enough to, you know,
if you wiggle it, it falls apart.
To make it fair,
let's just like the other ones.
And if it's, if you go too far,
you can always, you know,
put some super glue on there
and make it stick better.
So there's, there's no worry to, like,
over,
over sand the pieces,
or over whatever the pieces.
Because, you know, we have the,
yeah, you can just put some,
some super glue on there
if it gets too loose, basically.
So I fixed the scoop,
heat drop in the pieces, sorry.
I fixed a little scoop around this one
so that it falls off
and makes it fair.
This one again has three pieces to it.
It, Jesus Christ.
It has more pieces,
but they don't really,
they're not really supposed to come off.
So that's the, what is this guy?
Blacksmith.
That was pretty fun.
I like the hammer part
because you can, you know,
actually hit something
with some fair amount of force
instead of just using, like, a scooper.
Now, that's one of the newer ones.
This is another newer one.
I think it's bike force.
This one is...
Man, I don't know what this is.
It's a big gut sponsor's all over it
but I can tell you what one it is.
It looks like a scooper.
I want to say this one's bike force,
but it's not.
It's a bit like the witch doctor
but it has a scooper in the front,
four little scoopers in the front
that kind of dangle
and they come off.
So I had to,
I sanded those down a little bit
to give them some play
so that they've actually fall off.
Those were stuck on there really good
and then it has a top plate,
which is the third piece that can come off.
This one again has three motors,
three triple days.
And the top plate,
and you kind of hit it
and it kind of, it's loose,
all loose sitting on there.
It's not magnetic bake.
It just sits on the top.
But the problem with this one is,
you know, you've rattle it loose
and then it just kind of sits on there loose
and then falls back into place.
So there's no easy way to get this one
to just like straight up fall off
or like be thrown,
you know, throw them off of the battle button
unless you, you know, wedge it.
So this one kind of,
it's not as fair
because the witch doctor one has some play in it.
So if you hit it,
it'll back kind of bounce
so maybe I can put like
some of that yellow sticky stuff
you use in school to like put the tacky on there.
I can put some of that tacky on there
or put something for it to
bounce a seesaw
for like a better term.
So when you hit it,
it kind of bounces off
instead of just rattling around
when you whack it.
So maybe some kind of something in the middle
that'll make it so when you hit it,
it falls off of the,
off of the button.
Again, like the witch doctor
has a spinner in the front,
pulley based.
You want to watch for hair
and stuff like that.
I can already see.
It's got at least some hair in it.
But the maintenance on them,
obviously, is not that bad.
But it's got a,
like a front spinner.
It's bigger than
witch doctor's spinner,
but it's very light.
Draw a little hole in it
and put some weight in there
or draw a hole in it,
put some solder in there,
lead free solder,
which would be an interesting idea.
All in all,
I'm very impressed
with the quality of the hex box stuff.
I don't think there's anybody
that'll tell you that they're garbage
because I'm very, you know,
we got high standards here
at the heck of public radio.
So these are really cool.
One, you know, the kids,
the kid doesn't really
get that much into it
and, you know,
kind of go in and out of it.
If you get him watching battlebots,
he'll want to do them more often.
But,
I feel like
this one's pretty,
pretty slick too.
And with the mods
that I did to make the little scoopers,
I sanded down the scoopers on the front
and they actually kind of fall off
if you hit him with a certain amount of force.
Before you could basically hold the part
that's supposed to come off
and the thing would keep itself up.
So one of them I got
kind of loose and the other one I can
kind of hold up the bot with.
But if I shake it and move it at all,
it falls off. So this one's
kind of more or less fair.
So the idea is you want them to fall apart
when somebody hits them enough
and make it fair.
Back on the back.
And that's kind of what you want to aim for
a lot of times.
You got to keep the kids from covering up the IR
because they'll cover up the IR
and get all confused
why their battlebots not working.
He still doesn't quite understand how to sink them.
So I have him going another room
if he wants to sink his.
So he asks, he has to ask,
okay, what number does everybody have?
And then he picks a number
that everybody doesn't have.
And then he goes in the other room to try to get the bot to work.
He's getting better troubleshooting them.
It's a fairly complex thing to try to troubleshoot,
you know, batteries on the bot.
Batteries on the remote.
Is it on? Is it off?
Is it getting a signal?
Is it because the batteries are dead?
Or is it because, you know, you can't sink it?
So I'm giving them some leeway
of that, but he's a pretty smart dude.
A screwdriver. He has to help them
help them with the screwdriver.
But this one I kind of like too.
Quebec's robots. Solidworks. WPI.
I really don't know what this one's called.
Apex. Maybe Apex designs?
I don't know. That doesn't even tell you.
Anyways, that's kind of my review of these guys.
I keep six AA batteries,
or six AA batteries with them
and six remote batteries,
so just in case we're somewhere.
So the idea is I keep them in this little box
and when we want to do battle bot stuff,
pull out the box and all that.
Keep all the stuff together.
I'm actually looking for the ball right now
because the ball is missing.
So before we put everything in the box,
you got to run around and make sure that
you got all the pieces.
So I have to go find the box for the ball now
because my son put it somewhere.
Anyways, I'll begin to set a happy and safe fall days.
I'll look forward to doing some more episodes
for you guys.
And hope y'all didn't get sick of me last month
when I did one every week.
But I have time to record.
I just don't have time to put them out.
To put them out.
To post them that often.
So I show notes are always horrible.
But there's a lot of reviews online for these things,
specifically, but I just wanted to give you
an overall review of the battle bot stuff
and a hex bug stuff.
Because I enjoy it.
It's fun, and it's fun to kind of modem too.
Anyways, that's pretty much it.
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