Professor Boots' 3D-Printed Web-Controlled Dump Truck Is Here to Save Your Desk From Clutter
Fully 3D-printed bar the electronics, this tiny truck can drive, steer, and dump its load wherever you'd like.
Pseudonymous maker "Professor Boots," hereafter simply "Boots," has designed a 3D-printable microcontroller-powered dump truck for your desk — for when tidying the pens away seems like far too much effort.
"This is [an] open source 3D-printed RC [Remote Control] dump truck," Boots explains of his creation, "that solves the problem of too much desk clutter. Extra pens laying around? Gone. Electronic leftovers from your previous project? Gone. Your 3D printer is producing waste pellets that are totally cramping your style? Gone."
The scale-model yet fully-functional dump truck is actually Boots' second shot at the design, building on an earlier version. Among the additions are working headlights and a hitching system — expanding its carrying capacity with an optional trailer on the back.
Inside the 3D-printed vehicle is an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller board, connected to a 16340 battery with a boost converter attached, which uses an Arduino sketch to control the truck's two SG90 servos and one N20 motor through an H-bridge motor driver — with, of course, those LED headlights in the new model.
Control is handled through a web page served over Wi-Fi by the Espressif ESP32 microcontroller itself, providing the ability to move the truck forwards and backwards, steer it left or right, and activate the dumping mechanism.
Boots has uploaded the design to Printables under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license, with source code and a schematic available on GitHub under an unspecified open source license; the truck is also available as a kit of parts on Boots' web shop for $64, requiring only a 16340 battery to complete it.