2. Explain - Interaction Programming

To automate our robot and link it to physical events, we connect a Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller to hardware buttons, connect it to Wifi, and program it to trigger speech over the Peerbots API.

Core Concepts

Before we write code, let’s look at the key concepts:

1. Functions

A function is a reusable block of code that performs a specific action. If you find yourself writing the same code more than twice, it’s best to wrap it in a function. Functions can take inputs called parameters.

2. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

An API is a set of functions that allow developers to communicate with a service. We use the Peerbots API to trigger expressions on the robot face device programmatically.

3. API Keys

An API Key is a unique passcode string sent with every API request to authorize and identify who is sending the message. This tells the face device which account the trigger is coming from.

Setting Up the API

Method 1: The Interactive Docs (api.peerbots.org/docs)

1. Set up the robot face on app.peerbots.org/face and note the username.
2. Go to the docs page at api.peerbots.org/docs.
3. Click “Authorize” in the top right corner and paste your API Key.
4. Try the /v1/send-message/{username} endpoint by entering parameters and clicking execute.

Method 2: Python Scripting

You can run code to programmatically send messages to your face device:

import requests

api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"
username = "ROBOT_FACE_USERNAME"
url = f"https://api.peerbots.org/v1/send-message/{username}"

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

payload = {
    "message": "Hello! I am a social robot."
}

response = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
print("Response:", response.status_code, response.text)

Video & Software Guides

• Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Pico (MicroPython tutorials for beginners)
• Thonny IDE Guide (Recommended environment for editing code on the Pi Pico)
• Picozero Library Docs (Helpers to access hardware buttons and LEDs)