Dancing robot. Hackathon chaos.
The Story
The SoTa & Cocoa Robot Rave Hackathon in London, January 2026. 24 hours. A room full of makers. One goal: build something that dances to music.
Ravitto was born.
What We Built
A music reactive robot that:
- Analyzes audio in real time
- Moves servos to the beat
- Displays expressive animations on LED matrix eyes
- Actually looks like it's vibing
Stack: Raspberry Pi, Python, Servos, LED Matrix, FFT for beat detection
Key Learnings
1. Hackathons are about shipping, not perfection
We had grand plans for complex choreography. Shipped simple head bob and arm wave that actually worked. Better than ambitious and broken.
2. Hardware debugging is brutal under time pressure
Loose servo connection killed 2 hours. Always test mechanical connections first, then write code.
3. Personality comes from the eyes
The LED matrix "eyes" made Ravitto feel alive. Same movements without eyes looked mechanical. With eyes, it looked like it was having fun.
4. Teams matter
Solo, I would've given up at 3am. With a team, we pushed through and had something to demo.