How to make an Arduino Bucket Bot

Alright, everyone starts somewhere and its always helpful to be told something that actually makes sense.
this doesnt have and sensors however its intention is flexible enough to do so.
so shall we.

what you will need is:

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a bucket like plastic base
a differential drive thing (eg a segway, tank )
Pololu Dual Serial Motor Controller
https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/node/359 get the one
with the manual.
Arduino Deicimila
Arduino Proto Sheild
Jumper Wires
two sets of four AA holders

1. ok first what your gonna want to do is make sure
the protosheild fits snugg and all the pins fit.
then place the

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tiny little motor controller on the

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breadboard in a preferable position.

2. in the picture of the Motor Controller the pins 1
up are from left to right. connect the positive wire of
motor power sorce to pin one and the negative to pin
two. then with one of the jumper wires connect pin two to the ground on the Proto Sheild. Now connect the 5v out put on the Proto Sheild to the pin three.

3. Connect pin four on the Motor Controller to
pin

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7 on the Proto Sheild. Now connect pin five

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on the Motor Controller to pin 8 on the proto
sheild with another jumper wire.

4. for the next two pins on the motor controller connect the positive then negative wires respectively and then the same for the last two.
To see how this ends up there is a photo.

5. ok now comes the most difficult part, programming. if you do not already have the programm you can download it here
(http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software).

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the pin lay out is so that you want really have
to do any real programming.
open the arduino sofware and in there copy and paste
the arduino code halfway down this page
(http://psurobotics.org/wiki/index.php?title=Pololu_Dual_Serial_Motor_Controller).
connect the arduino to the computer then upload the program to arduino.
pic below…

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now you can play with the code
to make your robot do other things. in my video i simply
replaced the void loop with

SetMotor(1,255);
SetMotor(0,255);
delay(1000);
SetMotor(1,255);
SetMotor(0, 0);
delay(1000);

you can copy and paste that in
between the curly brackets right after the void loop() .

Now attatch to power sorce and watch your robot come to life.

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ps. you need to chuck its guts in the bucket.

well thats the tutorial short that it is and please complain if you have any complaints ( obviously ).
try adding bump sensors with help from the "How-to Tuesday" videos from Makezine on youtube under button.

Nebster

Great tutorial

And a great little bot too, plenty of room for expansion.

 

I honestly wonder how many
I honestly wonder how many buckets this good sir has recieved?

awesome build man. Also,
awesome build man. Also, that pic is lol, Edgee!