So this is my first robot report. It's on the first robot I built too. To say it from the beginning, I'm sorry I didn't put the LMR loge on my videos but I made them before joining LMR... I'll put the Logo on all the future videos. This was my first robot, and I say was because I had to take it apart so I can use the parts for other projects. That's what I do with all my projects because I don't have enough parts to leave them in every project, plus, they are kinda expensive. Especially the Arduinos. For building it I bought an Arduino Mega, a PING))), a DFRobot mobile developing platform, which comes with the 4 dc motors, a quad DCmotor controller, some breadboards, and, of course, wires :). Because it was my first attempt of building a robot, I didn't know how to make it, so I didn't know how to connect the motor controller to the Arduino. I think that was the hardest part for me. It's not an Arduino shield, I didn't even know what a shield was at the time... So I had to figure out how to hook it up. It had a description page but every pin had a weird code instead a name. After some 4 hours of trying to find out how the circuit works using my multimeter I finally got it. It was quite simple. I guess it's always hard the first time till you figure it out. After that, I made a code for the robot just to go forward, and it worked. I was so excited that I got it working so I went on making a more complex code. Then I came time to put on the PING))) rangefinder because the robot just going around the house was getting boring so I had to put some eyes on it so it could see. The PING))) was pretty easy to connect to the Arduino, since it only has 3 pins: GND, VIN, and SIGNAL. So I used the ping example in the Arduino software to make it work, and it did. I was getting the distance in the serial monitor. Then I modified the code to light up different LEDs depending on the distance, and after that, I incorporated the code in the main code with the motors and made the robot avoid obstacles. Watch the videos to see how it was doing. So after that I just kept on modifying the code to make it more accurate and to solve bugs here and there. I can send the code to whoever is interested but I'm pretty sure everyone has a pretty good idea on how to make. Tell me if oyu want the code anyway, I'll be happy to share it.
The rover drives around avoiding obstacles using the PING))) ultrasound rangefinder.
- Actuators / output devices: 4 Tamiya gear motors, quad DC motor controller, lightning LEDs
- Control method: Radio remote system from a toy RC car, it also has an autonomous mode.
- CPU: Arduino Mega
- Power source: 5 AA-cell battery pack for motors
- Programming language: Arduino(C)
- Sensors / input devices: Parallax Ping))) sonar
- Target environment: indoor
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/rover-robot-1
