The Open Duck Mini Droid: 4 Days of Soldering, Assembling, and Electrical Exorcisms

I spent 4 days building the Open Duck Mini Kit from Tnkr — an open-source animatronic duck inspired by Disney's Star Wars droids. I'd never soldered before. This is the full build diary. From a cheap USB soldering iron to debugging servo calibration with Claude in ‪@PyCharmIDE‬ this build threw everything at me: missing 3D-printed parts, heat nut discoveries, wiring diagram confusion, and some questionable wiring choices I can only describe as an electrical exorcism. 🎬 CHAPTERS 0:00 — Unboxing the Open Duck Mini Kit 0:29 — Body Assembly Begins 1:16 — Entering the Soldering Gauntlet 2:23 — First-Time Soldering (The Struggle) 5:02 — Wiser Iulia: What I'd Do Differently 5:26 — Debugging Servos with PyCharm & Claude 6:25 — Discovering Heat Nuts 7:26 — Day 2: Missing Part Setback 8:13 — Body Assembly Continued 9:23 — Raspberry Pi Zero & Multimeter 10:00 — Bluetooth Controller & Mic Hack 11:11 — Wiring Diagram Confusion 12:00 — The Duck is Complete + What's Next 🔗 LINKS • Open Duck Mini Kit: https://tnkr.ai/open-duck-mini/open-d... • PyCharm: https://jetbrains.com/pycharm Get started with electronics! My recommendations if you like this project: Elegoo screwdriver: https://amzn.to/3ONfd9J Arduino starter kit: https://amzn.to/40GjhLD Raspberry Pico kit: https://amzn.to/4bqp3Gr Raspberry Pi Zero: https://amzn.to/4wljfqe 3D printer I used - Centauri Carbon 2: https://tidd.ly/41Zf06V #elegoo @ElegooOfficial Thank you Tnkr for sending me this kit to try out the platform! My notes and comments + build pictures will be added to the instructions. And shoutout to Back To Engineering's official IDE and channel partner ‪@PyCharmIDE‬ for making these videos possible thotugh their #sponsorship. Follow iulia on: Patreon for updates, chat, extra content: patreon.com/c/BacktoEngineering Instagram for behind the scenes: instagram.com/backtoengineering GitHub for the project code: https://github.com/iuliaferoli X for yapping: x.com/iuliaferoli For business enquiries (sponsorships, collabs, etc) reach out at: [email protected] This list contains affiliate links; I may earn a commission if you make a purchase. #robotics #openduck #solderingstation #robotbuild #physicalai