Simple Simon

Let's Make Robots Robots
1

I built this super basic robot as a start-here style bot for a presentation I'm doing in a few weeks. I wanted something I could demonstrate building in realtime to a group of boyscouts. Simon is built with an arduino, dfrobot protoshield, breadboard, 2 parallax continuous rotation servos, 2 solarbotics wheels, a caster and a digital ir sensor. The whole thing is built with double sided tape (fritz start-here bot style). I should be able to demonstrate assembling him and uploading his program in about 15 minutes during my presentation. I'll be prepping all the parts with the tape ahead of time and have all the wires (except maybe 1) prepared before hand.

Obstacle avoidance, education

  • Actuators / output devices: 2 continuous rotation servos
  • Control method: autonomous
  • CPU: Atmega 328
  • Power source: 9v battery
  • Programming language: Arduino C
  • Sensors / input devices: Sharp IR
  • Target environment: indoor
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/simple-simon
2

Be cautious about one thing.

Using a 9v as a robot power source. 9v batteries can not supply the current needed to really power a robot. 4 AA rechargeable or alkaline will give you much better run time. You can check wikipedia, but, I believe a 9v is somewhere around 800mAh on average, while a AA alkaline is 1200 mAh -ish and a rechargeable can be up to 2600+ mAh.

Otherwise very nice. I am surprised there are not more CR servo powered SHR sized robots here.

3

yup.

I am very aware of the restricitions of the 9v vs runinng it off a 4xaa pack… just wanted something quick and easy to demonstrate building a robot and i didn’t have any spare aa battery holders around :stuck_out_tongue:  Also wanted to keep the size as small as possible.

I’m planning on building 2 other robots that run off very similar specs of these 2 CR servos and the digital IR sensors in the very near future.  Those will run off 4 AA’s and should have a much longer life span.