NSK Balance Bot

The Nerves Starter Kit Balance Bot is the first expansion of the NSK platform, and the robot built for the Achieving Balance workshop at Goatmire in September 2026. It ships as a kit that you put together yourself, with everything you need for a working two-wheeled robot in the box.

Features of the Balance Bot

The kit is built around the NSK mainboard, so you get the Allwinner T113, WiFi and Bluetooth, and the onboard I2C sensors. A motor expansion PCB plugs into the NSK’s GPIO header to drive the wheels, and there’s a 4.2” e-ink display for showing telemetry, state, or whatever else you want the bot to tell you about. Motors, wheels and the 3D printed case are all included.

Assembly takes about 1 hour and you’ll need just a screwdriver. There’s an assembly guide included to walk you through the build.

Programming it

The NSK Balance Bot runs on Beam Bots, a framework for building robots in Elixir. You describe your robot’s topology in a declarative DSL, where links, joints, sensors and actuators nest in code the same way they’re put together in real life. Beam Bots handles supervision, kinematics and real-time control on top of OTP, so when something fails it gets isolated instead of taking the whole robot down with it. Pretty handy when your robot is trying to stay upright!

We’ve put together the bb_nsk library to support the NSK Balance Bot hardware. It uses igniter to scaffold the robot into your project, so you can skip the boilerplate and get straight to the fun part. There’s a getting started guide to help you along.

Timeline

The first batch of Balance Bot kits will be in production in Q4 2026. Kits will be assembled and shipped from Luxembourg.

Waitlist

Signing up for the waitlist is the best way to show support for this project right now - it communicates your interest, which helps us figure out the quantity for the first manufacturing batch. Your support is appreciated :)