An E-Waste Robot Sculpture
This robot was built entirely from e-waste that would have otherwise been thrown away. I used stacked cardboard boxes for the head and torso, leaving them hollow so I could run the wires through the inside.
The head is my favorite part. It has a piece of cellphone camera glass and a piece of a motherboard with working LEDs behind them as the eyes, a 3.3V battery as the nose, pins for the teeth, ribbon cables for the hair, and a CPU mounted on top of the head. The ribbon cables give it a messy look that makes the robot feel more alive.
On the chest, I placed a CPU as the heart and another chip as the lungs. Behind the front are working controls, including an on/off switch, a search device button, volume buttons, a play button, a built-in speaker. The LEDs are powered by three AAA batteries, while the lamp uses 230V AC power. The built-in speaker, which I repaired from a JBL, can also play music.
The robot is holding a real cellphone motherboard in one hand, as if it is offering it to the viewer. With the camera glass and the phone motherboard, I wanted this to represent how important phones have become in our everyday lives. At the end of the other arm, I added a lightbulb to represent ideas and innovation that everyone is missing out because of scroll addiction.
After putting everything together, I connected the lamp wiring, labeled the controls by hand, tested all the electronics with a multimeter, and signed the back with the finish date STARDANCE – 1/7/2026.
Every circuit board, chip, cable, and electronic part came from old devices that were going to be thrown away. Nothing was bought new. My goal was to show that electronic waste can be reused to create something meaningful instead of ending up as rubbish — and as a bonus, I ended up with a cool new desk lamp out of it too.
- 6 devlogs
- 6h build
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