NES R.O.B.

I always wanted an NES R.O.B. as a kid but it was a weird and expensive toy. So getting deep into my nostalgia I picked one up off of eBay a year ago, but it didn’t work as expected, the left / right turning mechanism was broken. I got a few extra minutes last night and found the issue. A loose gear from the 30 year old glue decaying and falling off. A quick application of super glue and R.O.B. is up and running again. The NES control on these these are pretty fascinating as it doesn’t directly connect with the Nintendo, it communicates via pulsed flashes from the TV. The TV sends command signals during the blanking time to tell R.O.B. how to move, similar to how optical isolators function. Ada Fruit did a great write up and I cloned the project to get the initial control working.