Not too long ago I received a care package from CTC. He sent me 2 of his arduino PCBs he designed.
So that got me thinking, what would I build with it?
Well as this is going on, my highschool finally has its laser cutter installed. So it would be foolish of me not to use it.
Here I go, making my highest verison of a robot yet. Maze Solving Robot V3.
No one saw the first maze solving robot I tried to build, and no one wants to (yikes!). The second one was pretty good at solving the maze, but I could not get it to go back and drive the shortest path. My design has failed me twice already and I am not going to let it fail me again.
So I got to thinking, and i started designing. I am using some of the parts from my old robot to make this one, like the motors. One thing I really want on this robot are encoders. Encoders would make this a breeze. The ones for my motors cost $40, but it might be the price I have to pay.
Since I use AutoCAD in CAD class and since I do not want to have to design my robot at school, I downloaded AutoCAD onto my computer at home. After a few designs, this is what I have:
It is a 3 piece, double deck design. The top piece in the drawing above is what the 5 line sensors will be mounted to using bolts. This piece bolts onto the peice below it, this way i can raise or lower the sensors so I can reach the optimal height. The main deck (the one on the left) holds the motors, microcontroller, and ball caster. The top deck (the one on the right) mounts on top of the main deck using spacers and bolts. This deck will hold the battery pack and the motor driver. The battery pack might be 4-AA batteries or maybe a lipo.
The sensors will plug into the board with servo connectors.
The motor driver is one of my designs. It is a simple L293D breakout board.
The ball caster gets bolted on the bottom (picture of it on the top)
Well that is it for now. I should be laser cutting that out early next week.
Till then, in the words (and the actual hand writing) of CTC:
And just for fun...
Here is an early design of something else I might be making:
