MakeBlock mBot LED / Ultrasonic Adapter Plate

thingiverse

The MakeBlock mBot has a brilliant addon option of a 8x16 LED panel that you can attach to the front and use to show images/text. However, there is no way that I can see to tell the MakeBlock Blockly code that the screen is mounted upside-down and unless you do that, there is no way to also mount the ultrasonic sensor on the front. I made a really simple plate that you can lazer cut out of acrylic or 3D print that allows you to mount the LED panel the right way up using the original ultrasonic mounting holes/bolts and then you can attach the ultrasonic sensor to the top of the panel.using four M4 bolts/nuts. I have rounded the edges of the adapter plate more than the version shown here so it fits with the design of the LED panel more. Incidentally, with or without my adapter plate, I had found that the panel doesn't fit very well on the front of the mBot and that the LEDs got squashed against the metal frame and the cable output hit the main mBot logic unit. To get around this, I spaced the mounting of the LED panel forward a bit by putting an M4 washer between it and the frame and I also raised the mBot logic unit a bit by putting M4 washers between the stand-offs and the frame (you can see these in the images). You can see a couple of videos of it in use [here](You can see a video of it in action [here](https://twitter.com/ChurchersComp/status/1063088526756077568) and [here](https://twitter.com/ChurchersComp/status/1060114798686408705).