Phase 3 Part 2 - Manual IR Control (Cancelled)

Let's Make Robots
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In-Depth photos and videos of this entire project are available on my photobucket library.

Here's how it looked with temporary IR mounting:

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http://i1277.photobucket.com/albums/y485/BeepBoopBuzz/5884ec08-6500-483f-a29a-83471197807a_zps5246a029.jpg

After spending several frustrating hours trying to make the Adafruit/SainSmart Motor Shield (V1) play nice together, it's just not going to happen. I even rewrote several sketches to see if I could isolate any issues and make it work. Both libraries utilize timer 2 and I didn't manage to find any solid way to redefine which timer either used. 

Details of the timing problems: the timing issues completely lock down motor terminal 1 & 2 on the shield, while 3 & 4 remained active, but glitchy. For example, the rear motor on terminal 3 worked fine, but forward motor and its steering motor didn't work at all because they were on terminals 1 & 2. Even after moving the forward motor and its steering motor to terminal 3 & 4, the code ran glitchy.

Even when defining both a separate command for steering left steerMotor.run(FORWARD); or right steerMotor.run(BACKWARD); the timing issues made steering locked in the forward position when trying to use both frontMotor.run(FORWARD); and steerMotor.run(FORWARD); together. When steerMotor.run(FORWARD); or steerMotor.run(BACKWARD); were used independently, they would function as intended.

Though this brought a lot of head scratching, I did figure out a good position for the Arduino's power switch, which, when using a Sparkfun Barrel Jack Power Switch fits perfectly on the side of the chassis enclosure.

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http://i1277.photobucket.com/albums/y485/BeepBoopBuzz/IMG_5853_zps117d8858.jpg

Also, realistically, IR has a worse than terrible range, so I'm not really down any features.

For those interested in the IR codes I obtained from the SainSmart remote, and what my plans were with them, here they are:

  • Power = -484956645
  • Play/Pause = 1386468383

Number Keys for steering:

  • 1 = Steer Left Only = -1760117185
  • 2 = Forward = 1033561079
  • 3 = Steer Right Only = 1635910171
  • 4 = Steer Left & Move Forward = -1943902853
  • 5 = Stop = 1217346747
  • 6 = Steer Right & Move Forward = 71952287
  • 7 = 
  • 8 = Reverse = 465573243
  • 9 =
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If you want IR and Motors all in one replacement

Look at the Micro Magician from Dagu.  If the Adafruit MS V1 (L293) is working with that chassis, then the micro magician should. You could add it as your motor controler and keep the UNO on for other things.  They could talk to each other via i2c.

I do see that this RC has two driver motors.  You could use a small H-bridge like the L9110s for the steering. These h-bridges run @$2 on ebay.

 

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Thanks for the heads up,

Thanks for the heads up, jscottb!  Just updated a new blog post talking about possibly using an L9110 and other possible options! Sorry for the delay in responding, I’m new here and didn’t realize I can get comments to the blog posts without notification (will check site preferences).