Should you build an XGO-Duck?
It's a brilliant project and a young one. Here is what it asks of you, from someone part-way through.
Go for it if
You have a 3D printer you trust, you're happy to solder a little and run Python, and you'd enjoy being one of the first rather than following a polished guide.
Wait a while if
You want a kit that works out of the box, or a fixed budget. Parts, files and documentation are still settling, and the servos sell out.
What it costs
Our estimate for a standard build in the UK is about £800, before postage, import charges and filament, and assuming you already have an Arduino UNO Q. The breakdown is on parts and costs.
- Servos are most of it. Fifteen Feetech HD-1910-C001s, at €32.95 each from OpenELAB when we bought.
- Bearings are the surprise. The 16 × 22 × 4 mm size costs about £15 each from a UK stockist. Ten from AliExpress cost a few pounds if you can wait.
- Everything else is small: about $70 for Luwu's driver board and battery, and under £15 of screws.
How long it takes
- Printing: about 41 hours on our H2D for every part, at fine settings. Our first, quicker layout did everything on four plates in about 10.5 hours.
- Waiting: the servos were on pre-order when we bought, with a restock and then 10 to 20 days to ship. Order them first and print while you wait.
- Building: we'll fill this in when we've done it.
What you need to be able to do
- Print PLA cleanly, and TPU for the foot soles and beak edges.
- Check fits with calipers before committing to long prints. The designers suggest printing one servo mount and one bearing seat first.
- Set up and test bus servos, give each one an ID, and calibrate.
- Install Luwu's runtime on the UNO Q, which is a Linux board as well as an Arduino.
- Some soldering, if you add anything of your own, as we did for the head.
You don't need to train anything. The walking policies come ready-trained. Training your own needs an NVIDIA GPU, which for most people means renting one.
It's still in beta
When we started, Luwu's roadmap said no independent build had been completed. Battery details, print profiles and the licence were still being finalised. Expect to read the repositories closely, find gaps, and ask questions. That's half the fun, but it isn't a weekend kit.
Licence
Luwu describe their intent as allowing personal and educational builds, with commercial use needing their permission. The final licence isn't published yet, so check their repository before you sell anything you make from it.
Batteries
The pack is two 18650 lithium-ion cells, 8.4 V when full. Charge it only with the matching charger, never unattended, and check the connector's polarity on the board before plugging it in for the first time.
If you go ahead
- Order the servos first. They take longest.
- Order the board, battery and bearings, and the screws if you don't have them.
- Print a few small plates to check colour, finish and screw holes.
- When a servo and a bearing arrive, print the hip brackets and leg links and check the fits.
- Then print the rest, and read what went wrong for us first.