Hi all,
It's my first post here so I'm hoping I'm doing this right. I'm currently building a robot on the oh-so-popular Dagu Rover 5 platform (4WD). I don't have much mounted right now. One Arduino Uno, with an OSEPP motor shield and a servo on which I mounted a PING))) sensor.
For the moment, I'd just like to get this guy running autonomously to get the experience of an end-to-end project. I'm probably not even going to bother with the encoders just yet.
That being said, right now I power the servo from a 6 1.5 alkaline battery pack (it's a continous rotation servo rated 4 to 6 VDC) and the Dagu motors from a 9V battery pack through a 5V regulator. I'm hooking these straight to the shield which allows me to specify where they draw power from, I didn't want to blow up my Arduino.
Before you guys say anything, yes this is horrible. The Arduino is just tethered. I wanted to be safe so it seemed that doing this while messing around with the programming is safe.
What do you guys recommend? I took a look at Adafruit for batteries and found a few good 3.7V LiPo batteries, I suppose I could use two of these to drive the Dagu motors _and_ the Arduino? The servo should be able to draw enough power from the motor shield as far as I know.
I'm also curious what the recommendation would be for a beefier build, maybe some general tips?
Since you are using alkaline
Since you are using alkaline batteries, and since the weight is not such a big problem, I would recommend to simply buy a bunch of 1.2V NiMH batteries from your nearby photographic shop and be done with that.
You can have the uno tethered while powering it from batteries. It has a mosfet that shuts off the USB power then.