Some time ago, my family and I went to see the European NASCAR at the Cheste circuit. What initially was just a simple weekend plan ended up triggering a series of events that still keep me busy today. The kids were so fascinated that, when we got home, the first thing they said was, "Dad, we want NASCAR cars!" That day marked the beginning of a project that was supposed to be simple but quickly became complicated.

In the previous article, I introduced the design of a board for a low-cost robotics kit. After conducting several tests, I realized that the arrangement of the ESP32 microcontroller wasn't the most convenient, and furthermore, there was an issue with power supply, which wasn't sufficient to drive the motors, servo, and use the sensors. I needed to modify the design to change the position of the MCU and introduce separate power for the servos, leaving the L298N motor controller in charge of providing power to the rest of the components. I started to work on this, but at the same time, an idea crossed my mind. What if this time I made it fit into a structure built with Lego?

A few months ago, I decided to purchase a robotics kit to program it with the kids. I chose a widely used model that can even be self-assembled from an acrylic sheet or a similar material. The idea was to use it with an ESP32, as that's what I usually use (along with ESP8266 and lately Raspberry Pi Pico), and program it using Arduinoblocks since it offers programming identical to Scratch, which is great for young ones to experiment and learn.

Following the resolution of certain power source challenges stemming from the batteries initially employed, I am happy to say that my external solar-powered weather station has been successfully restored to full functionality. This particular (MeteoHome based) weather station is equipped with a  DHT22 sensor to get both temperature and humidity levels. Additionally, it features a BMP180 sensor,  dedicated to monitoring atmospheric pressure with quite good accuracy.