Animatronic Kit: Maxwell

It's our goal to give you 100% of everything you need to build and control your own animatronic.

Included in the box you get:

1) Parts to form the structures and mechanisms of Maxwell.

2) Four servo motors, configured for Maxwell.

3) Power supply, motor and logic control boards, and a USB cable.

4) All required hardware, including bolts, nuts, push rods, ball joints, etc.

5) Cosmetic vinyl sticker decals to give him his cool look. (You can also purchase blank stickers that can be drawn, colored, or printed on.)

Maxwell is meant to be as accessible as possible! We think that creative expression through robotics and animatronics is something everyone of all backgrounds can enjoy! Maxwell comes with everything you need to build him, and doesn't require any soldering or circuit building. Because of Maxwell's integration with Bottango, you can control and animate him without needing to write any code.

That being said, you need to be comfortable assembling parts together, as well as running and learning software and learning new skills.

Maxwell is made by Bottango, the company that created a state-of-the-art, intuitive animatronic animation studio. Maxwell is made to work seamlessly with Bottango.

In Bottango, you can animate animatronics the same way you animate 3D characters for movies and TV. You move a 3D representation of Maxwell into desired poses, creating keyframes and synchronizing those movements with audio. If you have ever done any kind of 3D animating, the workflow will be very familiar. And if you haven't, it's easy to learn!

Maxwell also comes with an example animation to learn from in a Bottango example project. However, the point of Maxwell is for you to build your own movements and animations. Maxwell is a platform for you to build animations on, not a robot with a prebuilt set of behaviors and interactions.

Maxwell is currently designed with four axes of movement:

1) Move his mouth

2) Move his head from side to side

3) Move his head up and down

4) Flap his wings

Maxwell is designed standing on a perch. He stands about 12" high, 9" wide, and from tail to beak is about 15".

The most easy and straightforward way to use Maxwell is with him connected to your computer. While Maxwell is connected to your computer, any movements you make on screen will be mirrored onto your real world animatronic. It is possible to export animations to be played back on Maxwell standalone, without an active computer connection; however, there are some limitations and it's an advanced feature of Bottango.

Maxwell himself doesn't have any speakers. That being said, Bottango, the software used to control Maxwell, is built with audio playback as a key feature. You can animate Maxwell to audio in Bottango, and play audio back in perfect sync with your animations via Bottango on whatever speakers you would like.

One other note: Maxwell isn't silent. You will hear motor movement while Maxwell is animating. It's simply a reality of motors at this size and gear reduction that you will hear some amount of motor sound.

Out of the box you can only control one Bottango animatronic kit at a time on your computer. With some advanced settings and changes in Bottango, you could control more than one Maxwell kit at a time.

When you get your Maxwell kit, it may be revision 1 or revision 2. Your revision number will be in the welcome packet. Make sure you have the latest version of Bottango installed (0.6.5a at least) to select which revision of Maxwell you have while following the assembly instructions.

There are no major functionality changes between rev 1 and rev 2 Maxwell. As part suppliers have changed, there are just a few minor modifications to the assembly process depending on the exact parts in your kit.

We designed Maxwell to be robust, but moving parts wear down and need TLC over time. If you need to purchase replacement parts, you can do so at Shop Bottango.

Upon request, customers with a valid order number are able to get STL and DXF files for Maxwell, as well as a template for the blank stickers. Reach out to Contact@Bottango.com with an order number and from the email address associated with that order to request the files.

The principle designers of Maxwell are:

Evan McMahon - Bottango founder and software / experience developer

Torrey Sprague - Hardware and animatronic developer

Right now we only ship to the US, but are actively working on expanding to international destinations soon. We currently estimate international shipping to Canada in early 2025. Unfortunately, we've had to push back our estimate for starting EU sales. We will provide more details when we have an update.