Animatronic Kit: Captain Cogbrow

It's our goal to give you 100% of everything you need to build and control your own animatronic.

Included in the box you get:

1) Parts and tools to form the structures and mechanisms of Captain Cogbrow.

2) Seven high quality, metal gear servo motors, configured for Captain Cogbrow.

3) Power supply and control boards.

4) All required hardware, including bolts, nuts, push rods, ball joints, etc.

5) Cosmetic vinyl sticker decals to give him his finished look.

6) A pirate hat and earring.

7) A stand to hold him

See standard vs pro upgrade kit for more details on what's included in a pro upgrade kit.

Captain Cogbrow is meant to be as accessible as possible! We think that creative expression through robotics and animatronics is something everyone of all backgrounds can enjoy!

Captain Cogbrow comes with everything you need to build him, and doesn't require any soldering or circuit building. Because of Captain Cogbrow's integration with Bottango, you can control and animate him without needing to write any code.

That being said, you need to be comfortable assembling parts together, as well as running and learning software and learning new skills.

Captain Cogbrow is made by Bottango, the company that created a state-of-the-art, intuitive animatronic animation studio. Captain Cogbrow is made to work seamlessly with Bottango.

With Captain Cogbrow, you can animate animatronics the same way you animate 3D characters for movies and TV. You move a 3D representation of Captain Cogbrow into desired poses, creating keyframes and synchronizing those movements with audio. If you have ever done any kind of 3D animating, the workflow will be very familiar. And if you haven't, it's easy to learn!

Captain Cogbrow also comes with an example animation to learn from in a Bottango example project. However, the point of Captain Cogbrow is for you to build your own movements and animations. Captain Cogbrow is a platform for you to build animations on, not a robot with a prebuilt set of behaviors and interactions.

Captain Cogbrow is designed with seven axes of movement:

1) Move his mouth

2) Move his head from side to side

3) Move his head up and down

4) Rotate his head left and right

5) Move his left eyebrow

6) Move his right eyebrow

7) Rotate his mustache

When measured fully built, including his stand, pirate hat, and ship's wheel:

10" deep x 1'4" wide x 1'4" tall.

The standard edition of Captain Cogbrow is best used with a USB connection to your computer. The pro upgrade kit contains what you need to untether Captain Cogbrow and use him without a computer.

See pro vs standard for more details.

It is possible to take the standard edition offline and play animations without a computer; however, it will require an advanced understanding of Bottango's software, comfort editing code and flashing new firmware, and there is limited storage space. The pro upgrade kit contains everything you need to make that process intuitive and easy.

Bottango, the software used to control Captain Cogbrow, is built with audio playback as a key feature. You can animate Captain Cogbrow to audio in Bottango, and play audio back in perfect sync with your animations via Bottango on speakers connected to your computer.

The pro upgrade kit contains audio hardware and speakers to play audio directly on your animatronic.

One other note: Captain Cogbrow isn't silent while moving. You will hear motor movement while Captain Cogbrow is animating. It's simply a reality of motors at this size and gear reduction that you will hear some amount of motor sound.

At launch, only animation for one animatronic at a time will be supported; however, we're working hard on expanding functionality here.

We hope to have a software update in the future that will give you the tools you need to animate multiple Bottango kits at the same time. This will not require any new hardware, just new software functionality to unlock this feature. Stay tuned for updates.

We designed Captain Cogbrow to be robust, but moving parts wear down and need TLC over time. If you need to purchase replacement parts, you can do so at Shop Bottango.

Upon request, customers with a valid order number are able to get STL and DXF files for Captain Cogbrow, as well as a template for the stickers. Reach out to Contact@Bottango.com with an order number and from the email address associated with that order to request the files.

The principle designers of Captain Cogbrow are:

Evan McMahon - Bottango founder and software / experience developer

Brian Roe - Hardware and animatronic developer

Any order can be canceled for a full refund up until the order is fulfilled.

If you want to change or cancel your pre-order, reach out to Contact@Bottango.com with your order number and let us know you'd like to cancel your pre-order.

We're excited to get our most advanced hardware out to folks ASAP, but we want it to be perfect and there's still work to be done.

If you order Captain Cogbrow with a pro upgrade kit preorder, you'll receive Captain Cogbrow himself in the same timeline as other orders. You can begin building and animating Captain Cogbrow as soon as you get him.

When the pro upgrade kit is finished, you will receive those parts as a separate shipment at no expense, sent to the original shipping address. We will contact all pro upgrade kit preorder customers before shipping to confirm that no address change is needed.

Our current estimate is late Q1 2025 (around March).

Yes, if you'd like to cancel your Pro Upgrade Kit preorder before it ships, please contact us at Contact@Bottango.com with your order number and let us know you'd like to cancel your pro upgrade kit preorder.

You will be refunded the price difference between the standard edition and the pro upgrade kit combo.

Right now we only ship to the US, but are actively working on expanding to international destinations soon. We currently estimate international shipping to UK + EU + Canada in early 2025, around the same time as the pro upgrade kit launch.