Scout has two motors with friction drive to the wheels and originally 3v power was supplied by two N-cells. A Basic Stamp-1 will run down to ~2.1v so ran fine on the 3v but I don't think the H-bridge did and I stripped it all off and put on a Stamp BS2 but that wouldn't run even with the extra N-cell added on the front, and disabling the Brown-Out didn't make any difference so I stripped off the BS2 and put Scout in the cupboard.

On 1 November 2025 I looked at Scout and thought 'why don't I make it work'. I decide to put on a PicAxe28x2, which will work down to just over 3v, and port the software from Duplhex. I had some small H-bridges and put one on the back then added Optical Whiskers and an IR sensor for control from a Sony handset, the same as on my Bambino robots.

The Optical Whiskers and Feelers work by using the four phototransistors (in black tubes) to measure the light coming to the robot. If more light comes with the LEDs on, then there is an object reflecting it back.

Now Scout can run around avoiding obstacles and table edges and execute any of the 16 16-byte routines in EEPROM.

Scout Software

• Scout_8-overview.bas
• Scout_8-commands.bas over serial link
• Scout_8-IRcommands.bas from Sony IRcontroller
• Scout_8-0.bas
• Scout_8-1.bas
• Scout_8-2.bas
• Scout_8-3.bas