Hexapod robot

Everything about my six-legged walking robot, from the first FPGA-driven version in 2009 to the current Teensy robot with its firmware-in-the-loop Unity simulation. Each generation has its own folder, named after the year it started, with its firmware, simulation, hardware, documents and photos together.

Working on the robot now? Go to 2026-current/. Everything else is history.

Timeline

Folder	When	Hardware	What it did
2009-fpga/	2009–2011	FPGA, own frame design	the first version. The code is lost; photos, videos and the frame design (original-frame/, the base of every version up to 2023) are left
2011-firefly-mega-ssc32/	2011–2012	Arduino Mega 2560 + Lynxmotion SSC-32	"FireFly": walking sequences with a Wii Nunchuk, later IR remote, ultrasonic radar head and GPS
2012-simulation/	2012–2014	PC	a Visual Studio leg-IK visualiser (2012) and a Processing 3D simulator (2014)
2014-ik-core-task-queue/	≤ Feb 2014	Arduino	a rewrite of the IK core around a task queue, without servo output yet
2016-ssc32-processing-port/	~2016–2018	Arduino + SSC-32	the Processing simulator's classes ported to Arduino, driving the SSC-32 again
2018-unity-sim/	2018–2023	PC + SSC-32, later the Teensy	Unity computes the walking and drives the robot: first the SSC-32 over serial, from 2019 through the remote
2019-teensy-nrf24/	2019–2022	Teensy 3.6 on the robot (replaces the SSC-32), Teensy remote with Nextion screen, nRF24L01	servo passthrough: Unity → remote over USB → radio → robot
2026-current/	2026–	Teensy 3.6 robot, Teensy 4.1 remote, Fusion 360 designed parts	IK, gait, body pose and IMU stabilisation on the robot; the unchanged firmware also runs inside Unity

Repository notes

• Photos, videos, PDFs, Office files, CAD and other binaries are stored with Git LFS (see .gitattributes). A normal clone downloads them; set GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 to clone only the code.
• Files are stored exactly as they were (no line-ending conversion), so old code is byte-for-byte the original.
• This repo was put together in October 2026 from the Gitea repos Hexapod_2027, Hexapod, Hexapod-App, Hexapod-processing, Hexapod_Simulation_Unity, remote and Hexapod-Archief, the NAS folder Projecten\Electronics\Hexapod, the Arduino sketchbook and the Fusion 360 exports. The history of every repo except Hexapod-Archief is kept (its own history only held the same photos and videos again). Old code versions that only existed as rar files or backup folders are dated commits.