ACV Hackathon 2026

Boxtron Online

Camera, motors, and edge AI in one small chassis — Boxtron doesn’t just watch and move, it talks back with what it sees and what it thinks you should do, from anywhere in the world.

Team – ACV Data Systems

Arpit Rana
Azeem Syed
Joel Shajan

Why we built this

The spark: “Did I leave the stove on…?”

A familiar worry turned into a project idea — if a robot can see and move on its own, why not have it check on the house for you, wherever you are?

Animated story: a person outside the house worries they left the gas stove on, calls Boxtron on the phone, Boxtron rolls through the house room by room, checks the stove and confirms it's off, and the person is relieved

Objective ⏱ as of 5 min ago

A pair of eyes and a pair of hands for home, wherever you are

One small robot, one job: be there when you can’t — watching, checking, and helping around the house.

Detect: spot objects and people in view using on-board vision, in real time
Move: drive itself toward whatever it noticed, for a closer look — no joystick needed
Help: lend a hand with small daily tasks around the house, and suggest what to do next
Watch: keep an eye on home, and check in from your phone, from anywhere in the world

Simple enough to build in a couple of days, useful enough to keep running after.

How it’s built

Regular parts from around the house, not a robotics kit

No machining, no 3D printing, nothing custom-ordered — just parts you’d find in a junk drawer or an Amazon cart.

Chassis

An Amazon delivery box, doubled up for strength — free, sturdy, already in the recycling bin

Brain

A Raspberry Pi 5 — a full computer the size of a deck of cards

Eyes

A regular USB webcam — plug and play, no special drivers

Motor control

One small motor driver board — a few dollars, wires straight to the Pi

Legs

A handful of hobby motors and tires — the kind sold for school science projects

Power

A battery pack, off the shelf — nothing custom to charge or regulate it

Put together over a couple of days — simple parts, snapped together, doing something clever.

Looping clip of Boxtron's cardboard chassis slowly turning, showing the wheels, motor driver, and wiring from every side

Built over a couple of days, one side at a time

Behind the scenes

Assembling Boxtron

Watch: assembly, start to first roll

Architecture

Laptop to Pi to motors

Top-down view inside Boxtron's cardboard chassis: motors, motor driver board, battery pack, and the Raspberry Pi 5 wired underneath

Inside the box — motors, driver board, and the Pi 5

What it can do today

See, move, and talk back

Seeon-board camera spots people and objects

→

Movedrives itself toward what it noticed

→

Talk backhears, thinks, and speaks its suggestion out loud

Every model runs locally: no cloud, no API key, nothing leaves the machine.

Playful cel-shaded illustration of Boxtron with sunglasses, fire, and a "Beep boop, I see you" speech bubble

Demo

See Boxtron in action

Watch: live demo

Limitations, today

☕ hackathon-tired

What’s not there yet

Runs over Wi-Fi already, but still tethered by a USB power cable — the on-board batteries aren’t big enough yet to run untethered
No arm yet, so “helping” is mostly watching and reporting for now
Only as far as Wi-Fi reaches today; internet access is next
Distance to objects is an estimate, not a true depth sensor

Now

Wi-Fi driven, watches and reports — no arm yet, still cable-powered

Next

Battery power for untethered runs, plus a robot arm to lend a hand

Later

An LLM agent in charge — noticing, deciding, and acting on its own

Before we go

What came pre-built, and what happened in 24 hours

🛒 Sourced ahead of time

Prep work the plan allowed before the clock started — just parts, nothing built.

Raspberry Pi 5 L298N motor driver 4x hobby DC motors + wheels USB webcam AA battery holders Cardboard box (chassis) Breadboard + jumper wires LEDs + resistors microSD card ESP32-S3 (on hand, unused)

⚡ Built in the 24 hours

Everything else — wiring, code, voice, remote access, and this deck.

GPIO → L298N wiring Skid-steer drive class Person/object detection Laptop ↔ Pi control link Local voice loop Browser console + phone view Remote access over Tailscale Docs, ADRs & this presentation

🧰 What powered it

Everything runs locally — no cloud, no API keys.

Core & hardware

Python 3.12 uv gpiozero Raspberry Pi OS (Trixie)

See, hear, think, speak

YOLO11n + OpenCV whisper.cpp Ollama (Gemma, Moondream) Piper TTS + ffmpeg

Serving & access

Python http.server Server-Sent Events Tailscale

Build, test & ship

pytest ruff Docker Compose GitHub Actions CI Cloudflare Pages

Boxtron

Thank you! 👋

Questions?

Boxtron driving in, dancing around, and zooming off