RESPITE LABS
Unit 001 · Respite
Phase Shell printed · first parts on the wayShell printed
01 / 08 · Machine
Fig. 01 · still image
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Respite Labs · a robot runtime, built in public

Respite: the test robot for Respite Labs

A runtime for small tracked robots, tested on one I'm designing and 3D-printing from scratch.

A small robot I'm building at home. Not driving yet. Status, : shell printed, first parts ordered.

He's designed so a learned drive layer owns his tracks, and Claude gives him his personality and his goals without ever sending a motor command. Every decision is logged below.

The first offer is the runtime and the build method. Not a finished robot, and no preorders.

Size
274 × 193 × 185 mm L × W × H
Compute
Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB) + Pico 2
Face
Waveshare 1.9″ LCD
Mass
not yet stated
Sensors
RPLIDAR C1 · Waveshare IR camera · 2 × VL53L0X · 2 × I2S MEMS mics
Motion
1 × SC09 (head tilt, 6 V from a UBEC) + the Hiwonder chassis motors
Power
UPS Module 3S, 3 × 18650 (Molicel M35A), ≈ 38 Wh, ≈ 3 h estimated

a face first.
then everything that carries it.

See his face Read the build log Buy him a part on Ko-fi (opens in a new tab)

Respite seen three-quarter from the front and a little above, on black: a black tracked base, a low lidded body with the lidar puck on its roof, and a boxy head on the neck with a magenta eye and a blue eye lit on its face screen.

Fig. 01 · the current CAD, exported from FreeCAD: dock still to come

Face · one screen, two eyes

Two headlights and a talk bar.

One small Waveshare 1.9″ screen set into his head. Two headlight eyes, magenta on your left and blue on your right, and a violet talk bar where a mouth would be.

Most of his character lives in the face. The eyes are my 2022 WRX's headlights, redrawn: a wedge, a round projector pupil, and a C-shaped running light over each that doubles as his brow.

An expression is a handful of numbers: lids, gaze, pupil, brow. Twelve of them live in one file, and the same numbers drive the face on the 3D model here and, once ported, on his own screen.

Panel
1.9″ LCD, 42.72 × 22.70 mm lit
Authored
600 × 450, scaled by 16/15
Timing
250 ms tweens, 120 ms blinks
Idle
dim at 30 s, sleep at 5 min
Talk bar
up in 30 ms, down in 180 ms
  • Eye code: built, tested
  • Screen: chosen
  • Robot port: not yet
640 px canvas 480 px canvas NEUTRALNEUTRAL SAFE area inset 24 running light the brow talk bar rests at 15 % L · magenta his right R · blue his left
Fig. 02 · The face screen as he's designed to draw it, in the expression named on the screen: computed and painted by his own face code, not drawn by hand. The code's tests keep every expression inside the dashed safe area. On his 1.9″ screen the drawing is fitted to the 42.72 × 22.70 mm lit area.

Body · base, head

He looks sideways with his whole body.

A Hiwonder tank chassis and a tilting head.

In the CAD, the lidar stands bare on the roof behind his head; where the head blocks its view, the camera takes over. Two laser distance sensors under the chassis's ends watch for drop-offs, and the rear one finds the dock; two mics sit in the sides of his head.

The head is designed to nod like Anki Vector's, on a hinge low at its back: 45° up and 22° down, driven by one small bus servo. The body is two prints on the chassis: a screwed neck and a click-on lid.

Base
Hiwonder, 273 × 193 × 94 mm
Lidar
RPLIDAR C1, ≥ 280° at rest
Camera
Waveshare IR, in a glued-in insert
  • CAD: built and checked
  • Parts: first ones ordered
  • Shell: printed
Respite from the side, facing right: the tracked chassis with its road wheels, the low body with the lidar puck on its roof at the back, and the rounded head on its neck at the front, level.
Fig. 03 · Side view of the current CAD, rendered from the same model as the 3D one on Machine: head level.

3D Printing · the shell

His shell is printed. Three heads to get the head right, then the final lid and neck.

Every piece is held to 250 mm or less, so each one fits my Bambu Lab A1's 256 × 256 × 256 mm bed, on the stock 0.4 mm nozzle, all in black ELEGOO PETG. It takes a warm Pi and motors and the knocks better than PLA, and needs no enclosure like ABS.

The first two heads came out rough and stringy. The third, at 235 °C with slower walls, tuned retraction and Arachne walls, came out clean. The servo's tower nearly snapped off the second one, so a web now ties it into the wall, and the camera mount became its own small insert, printed face down so its holes come out round.

The lid prints as a wall ring and a roof panel that drops into it and is glued, so every visible face prints smooth. One printer, one plastic: a cracked piece is an afternoon's reprint.

Bed
256 × 256 × 256 mm
Nozzle
0.4 mm
Material
ELEGOO PETG, black · 235 °C, 0.16 mm layers
Final plates
head · lid · neck
Heads printed
3 prototypes
Final shell
lid & neck printed
  • Shell: printed
  • Final head: next
Fig. 04.1 · The third prototype head printing, 2026-10-11: the one that came out clean. Time-lapse from the A1's camera.
Fig. 04.2 · The final lid, 2026-10-12.
Fig. 04.3 · The final neck, 2026-10-13.

Mind · two layers, what runs where

Two layers. Only one of them drives.

The drive layer runs on him and owns the motors. Claude sets the goals and never touches them.

He's designed to see people, find his dock by a printed tag on it, stop before a stair or a desk edge, and turn toward whoever is talking.

If the Wi-Fi drops, he's designed to stop, hold still or head for the dock, and show a lost-connection face. Designed, not demonstrated.

Why the split: a language model steering motors is good reasoning arriving late, into a body it can't feel. Claude decides where he should care to go. A learned policy on the Pi works out how, from what his tracks actually did on this floor a moment ago. Nothing between them is hand-tuned per surface.

Motors, encoders, IMU, the tilt servo, the lights, the distance sensors, and a safety stop designed to work whatever the Pi or PC is doing.

The drive layer: lidar mapping, route planning and the learned drive policy, plus the face and offline person detection. It's designed to keep its own copy of the map, so he can drive without the network.

Claude is the personality and sets the goals; the PC runs speech to text and back, the heavy vision and his memory. It's designed to answer with a goal, and the Pi to plan the route and drive.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

  • Who runs what: designed
  • Software: not written

Log · the real history

Decisions first. Parts later.

One line per decision or check, newest first, straight from my design notes and commits.

First entry
2026-09-23, the pivot
Latest
, the final neck
Sources
my design notes and commits
Order
newest first
  1. Printed the final neck, upright with tree supports at its back. With the lid, his body's shell is printed.
  2. Printed the final lid in two parts: a wall ring printed upright, and a roof panel printed top side up that drops into it and is glued, so every face you see comes out smooth.
  3. Placed the first parts order, from US sellers: the chassis with its motor driver, the head's servo and its driver board, the UPS Module 3S and its three cells, two Pico 2s, the UBEC and the level shifters. The Pi 5, lidar, camera and screen come next.
  4. The third prototype head came out clean at 235 °C with slower walls and tuned retraction. A web now ties the servo's tower into the wall, and the camera mount is its own insert, printed face down so its holes come out round.
  5. Printed the first prototype heads in black PETG. Both came out rough and stringy on the curves, and the servo's tower nearly snapped off the second.
  6. Episode one is up on YouTube: I'm Giving Claude a Robot Body (It Can't Drive).
  7. Moved his face onto a Waveshare 1.9″ LCD in a two-piece printed head; the face code's drawing is fitted to its lit area.
  8. Started routing the cables in the CAD: every run's length, bends and supports are measured and checked.
  9. Two VL53L0X laser sensors under the chassis's ends, looking 45° down and out: both watch for drops, the rear one also finds the dock.
  10. The head's servo is a Waveshare SC09, modelled from Waveshare's own file; a Hobbywing UBEC gives it its 6 V.
  11. Power from parts I can buy ready-made: a Waveshare UPS Module 3S and three 18650 cells. He backs into his dock onto two nickel pads.
  12. Stood the RPLIDAR C1 bare on the roof behind his head, with nothing near it that could cost it performance. The head hides a wedge dead ahead; the camera covers it.
  13. Gave him Anki Vector's nod: a hinge low at the back of the head, 45° up and 22° down.
  14. The printer arrived, and this site gained its 3D Printing screen.
  15. Moved the design onto Hiwonder's own model of the tread base: v3, a printed body on the chassis I'm buying.
  16. Wrote my printer into the design: a Bambu Lab A1 with a 256 mm bed, printing black PETG. The visor prints in clear PETG.
  17. Placed the camera lens from the Camera Module 3 Wide drawing. Looking fully down, he sees the floor from 283 mm ahead of the tracks (first estimate 591).
  18. Rendered the model beside my concept art: the head came out a near-cube, and through the visor the eyes read pink and mid-blue.
  19. Rebuilt the site model from the CAD and checked it: every part within 0.049 mm of its CAD box, 215 mm tall.
  20. Capped the head at 10° down, from 25°, so the camera can still see the floor past the full-width nose skirt at his front.
  21. Dropped the chin from my concept art; the intake vents moved to the body front. The speakers fire through printed grilles.
  22. Added underglow for mood and charm, and an NFC spot on the back of his head: tap a phone there to get a link (dropped 2026-09-26).
  23. One 3.5″ IPS screen behind a smoked visor beat a smaller 2.41″ AMOLED. The visor hides the backlit black.
  24. Took ideas from Anki's Vector robot, not its likeness. A target of about 210 mm tall, with a head that only tilts.
  25. Moved the heavy thinking to my PC over the network; the Pi 5 keeps what has to work offline.
  26. Chose a bought Hiwonder tank chassis over my own tracks and drivetrain: the custom track couldn't be bought.
  27. Added a Pico for real-time work: encoder pulses Linux can't count reliably, and a stop if the Pi hangs.
  28. Eyes from my 2022 WRX's headlights: magenta on your left, blue on your right, the running light as a brow.
  29. Started an original robot of my own and named him Respite.

Follow · what happens next

The log gets longer. Follow it.

Last updated

New lines land in the log when something is decided or checked, not on a schedule. Respite Labs is bootstrapped and pre-revenue apart from tips on Ko-fi, which buy parts. The first offer will be the runtime and the build method; there are no preorders for a finished robot. The Amazon parts links on the Mind and Contribute screens are affiliate links; they earn me a small commission and cost you nothing.

Next, as of : print the final head, fit the first parts as they arrive, buy the Pi 5, lidar, camera and face screen, then wire him and write the firmware.

Built for people putting a small tracked robot on a Pi who are done tuning a controller per floor, and for anyone who wants a language model in the loop without letting it near the motor driver.

Questions and corrections welcome: hello@walleisreal.xyz

Watch the build: episode one, I'm Giving Claude a Robot Body (It Can't Drive) (opens in a new tab), is on YouTube.

Elsewhere YouTube (opens in a new tab) Twitch (opens in a new tab) X (opens in a new tab)

Open problems

  • Drive policy. Designed, not trained. It learns from his own tracks, so it has nothing to learn from until there's a body to drive.
  • Dock. The two charging pads on his back are placed; the dock whose pins they meet when he backs in isn't designed yet.
  • Tilt. A 3 mm printed key carries the whole servo torque that nods his head. It's untested, and so is the head's weight against the servo.
  • Mics. Two mics in the head's sides hear left from right, not front from back, and the bore in front of each is sized by calculation, not yet by a test.

Contribute · buy him a part

Help put him on his tracks.

His shell is printed and the first parts are ordered: the chassis and his power are bought. The Pi 5 and the lidar are the big ones left. Tips on Ko-fi go straight into buying them.

Buy him a part on Ko-fi (opens in a new tab)$5 a part · ko-fi.com/criticalape

  1. 01Raspberry Pi 5, 8 GB, opens in a new tab affiliate linkHis main computer. It runs the learned drive policy that owns his tracks, and the planner that picks his route.$200
  2. 02Hiwonder tracked chassis, opens in a new tab affiliate linkHis tracks, suspension, motors with encoders and the motor driver. Every other part is built on top of it.Bought
  3. 03Slamtec RPLIDAR C1, opens in a new tab affiliate linkThe spinning laser on his roof. It maps the room around him 12 m out, ten times a second, so he can find his way.$75
  4. 04Waveshare UPS Module 3S, opens in a new tab affiliate link + three Molicel M35A cells, opens in a new tabHis power: about 38 Wh, an estimated three hours a charge, and it charges through the pads on his back.Bought

About $560 to go of the roughly $800 he needs in all: the Pi 5 and the lidar above, then the camera, the face screen, the sensors, the audio and the screws. Each part above links to the listing its price comes from (checked 6 October 2026), and prices move, so each one is checked again before it's bought.

Tips go to me, Connor (CriticalApe), through Ko-fi. Respite Labs isn't a charity, so tips aren't tax-deductible, and they buy nothing in return but parts for him.

Can't tip? Ideas and corrections help too: the address is on Follow.