Posts tagged with “arduino”
Robot progress
I haven’t really played with any of my robotics projects lately (read: in the past year) and recently I just decided to stop delaying and make it happen.
The idea is to use have some electronics (initially just a micro-controller, but eventually a small computer) control an autonomous robot which uses a remote control car as its base. This isn’t your little toy car, this is a standard model RC car that you get at a hobby shop - components based, all wheel drive, servo controlled steering and motor controller. It’s also really, really, really fast; while it is a little too fast for an indoor robot, if I ever want the speed, at least I’ll have it.
I’ve thrown out the car body since it isn’t really required and besides, it wouldn’t fit after all the electronics I want to add. I’ve built an aluminum bracket and bolted it to the plastic frame and all my electronics are being mounted to this frame. For now, I’ve just attached some aluminum stock as cross-members to mount hardware on, but that may change in the future.
So enough about ideas and back to the progress.
What you get from a little bit of initiative, knowledge, and a few hours is a (mostly) working demo of software controlling hardware. As the video shows, my bench-top power supply just can’t give the kind if inrush current the motor requires so it creates this jerky, start/stop annoyance.
I plan to get a couple new RC car batteries, which should take care of the immediate issues of my power supply.
11:04 AM | Tags: arduino, projects, electronics