22 Jan 2015 Update: Web Interface Control: Graphic Design (completed)Link to Blog Post
Notice: I jumped ahead to Phase 9 and will finish it to establish web control before going back to Phase 6.
See project ouline and links to the blog articles below.
I am building a web accessible IP camera robot out of a Maisto Tech R/C Rock Crawler platform for remotely accessed security.
This R/C platform already has a huge modding community with a lot of info already out there on the net. It is also a very cost-effective kit for its performance. $30 will get you a very capable 4WD chassis which can easily traverse an indoor environment: carpet, toys, clothes, etc.
I wish I were this organized. I tend to work in a much more chaotic fashion. I think that you’ll accomplish more, faster. I look forward to seeing what you’ll accomplish.
Thanks, I hope so. We’ve each got our own style and I enjoy learning from everyone, no matter how chaotic they get! Sometimes chaos brings out some really ingenious designs because of obstacles inherent in the project.
I have always used R/C tucks as my testing and playing beds. You have a good base to work with.
The Adafruit Motor shield is a nice and easy board and library to use, but… You will find it may limit you in what you can do with your controller board. It eats up a lot of io pins and timers.
For your setup you could go for a 20amp or so esc to run the rear motor and a small h-bridge like a L9110s or a relay board (for the steering) This would free-up a good many resources on your uC. You could also opt for a different h-bridge shield for the two motors.
Power electronics isn’t my thing. Yes, I can do it with a bit of help; one of the reasons that LMR is great is the number of people with different area of expertise.
I can solder and program almost anything. Networking, no problem. But ask me to design a motor driver and I’ll for for a Sabertooth or a RoboClaw any time. I like Adafruit and have a number of their items. However, unless you really need a lot of motors right now, I think that’s the wrong shield for you.
A long time ago I made some basic H-Bridge boards from an IC; it’s probably easier today. And Adafruit and SparkFun sell a couple of prototyping shields for the Arduino.
I think that you need more of a robot oriented shield with exactly the number of motor drivers you need plus some sensor inputs. Sometimes it’s more fun to buy, sometimes to build.
For myself, I buy my motor drivers because I’m lazy. I use the Sabertooth and such because I like playing with large robots and I don’t want to set the bot on fire. I’ve seen what happens when I play with power electronics when I’m not careful and I like to build big bots with large motors. Maybe in six months I’ll feel comfortable enough to build a large H-Bridge board.
I read your project explanations, very clever work. I picked up a Maisto and some NiMH batteries, its an amazingly nimble platform for the money. I’d like to use it for some projects similar to what you are doing. But I am looking at the disassembly and having a problem. Took out 4 screws to remove the top body cover, and then another 4 screws to hopefully be able to pull off the top of the PCB case and get at the wiring. It won’t come off! I am thinking it may have been glued on? Am I missing something? I don’t want to have to dremel the top off of the case. Did it just pull right off for you or you had to do something else?
Hey Capstan, thanks for the compliment. The vehicle’s car/truck-like body is held in place with 4 screws. Remove them and you’re looking at the main chassis (wheels, suspension, battery compartment and the 4 horned compartment that holds the R/C motherboard. That compartment has 8 screws holding it together. 4 beside each of the grey socket joints and and 4 more (2 on each side) that clamp it to the black ball & socket joints. Here’s a closeup where you can see the two screw holes on each side of the black socket and one hole next to the grey sockets. Shouldn’t be glued together.
Thanks, I had removed all of the screws as you said but still could not pull off the cover for the motherboard compartment. I borrowed a rotory tool and cut the top cover off (avoiding the various mounts). Apparently the one I bought was in fact glued together. Maybe they did it to keep water from getting in and corroding things. At any rate I exposed the existing board and snipped it out. Your explanations were extremely helpful.
I am using the IOIO-OTG board, which can be driven by ordinary Android cellphones. I decided to go with the Rover 5 motor controller like you did, and that has worked out reasonably well. It was a fair amount of work wiring everything up, and also writing the Android application to drive the finished product. I made things doubly time-consuming by designing it such that all the major components can be taken apart without unsoldering anything and reused in other projects. I think next time I won’t go to that trouble. Its a bit of a wiring nightmare but it works. When I get finished I intend to post the details on the forum here.
Have you made a design decision regarding the IP camera yet? I would be interrested on what you have came up with.
I’m planning to build a similar robot as you but on a poor studet’s budget. I’m thinking of using 2 android phones in direct Wi-Fi mode. I would put an old android phone on the robot and use a tablet to connect to it directly but I have yet to try the setup yet.
You can have a streaming ip camera app on the robot and a bluetooth or wifi listener on the robot, then have a bluetooth or wifi controller app in background and watch the camera stream on the browser. Next step is to allow to send command from the web, but i haven’t found yet a valid open source ip camera app. I guess i can try to make one:)
