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RC Car - BOE Bot style with Tilt steering — Parallax Forums

RC Car - BOE Bot style with Tilt steering

Beau SchwabeBeau Schwabe Posts: 6,566
edited 2011-01-14 22:06 in Robotics
Ok, so I started the frame of this Car several months ago... see link

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?118861-Homebuilt-Robotic-Platform-AKA-Retrobot&p=873514&viewfull=1#post873514

... and it sat, and sat. Last Monday My oldest daughter comes to me and says "Daddy, the show and tell topic for this week at school is inventions, and I want you to bring that robot that you made where GiGi (<- my youngest daughter) and I got to ride on it" ... Ok, so yeah, when I put the frame together in January I 'tapped' the motors to a battery with them sitting on it and made it go.

Anyway, I was looking for an excuse to put this thing together. I knew I had all the stuff laying around, but nothing put together. I spent spent 3 evenings working on code and hardware and was able to present it last Thursday in front of 30+ eight year olds. Needless to say it was a great success, and there were tons of questions. :-)

This really is a simple design, but I thought it would be a good start for someone else to work with to get them started.

There is a 'safety' feature that I feel is important to implement on ALL wireless designs. The transmitter MUST be in constant communication with the receiver. If there is a 'glitch' due to environmental noise or out of range and the receiver can't recover within 1/4 of a second, the main power to the drive motors is shut down.

Also, the communication speed is 6000 baud ... this could be anything as long as the transmitter and receiver are set the same, but I wanted to choose an odd-ball number, so it would be less likely to receive valid code from another source if the transmitter was off or out of range.

Transmitter:
TRANSMITTER.JPG


Receiver:
Motor Drive and Control.JPG
RECEIVER.JPG


Undercarriage:
100_2523.jpg
100_2520.jpg
100_2524.jpg


Receiver (Top):
100_2529.jpg


Transmitter:
100_2534.jpg



Propeller Code:
Attachment not found.
Attachment not found.
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Comments

  • bennettdanbennettdan Posts: 614
    edited 2010-12-30 15:53
    Beau
    Good Job on the Platform...I like that u used the odd baud for a built in failsafe.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2010-12-30 19:18
    NIce job! I also find it helpful to have a deadline to get a project done. I bet we all have several projects in progress, and sometimes it's easy to get overwhelmed and do nothing ! A friendly kick in the pants is good motivation. Contests and show & tells are good pressure to get things done.
  • NikosGNikosG Posts: 705
    edited 2011-01-12 10:53
    Hi Beau,
    Thank you for sharing this project! It is very helpful for my project too!
    I would like to ask you if it is possible to replace one of the Propeller Demo Boards (the receiver or the tnansmitter) with a Basic Stamp Board and Bs2 microcontroller.
    If it is possible which one is preferable to replace? The receiver or the transmitter? and finaly could you give us some examples for this (code and schematic)?
    Nikos
  • bsnutbsnut Posts: 521
    edited 2011-01-14 22:06
    bennettdan wrote: »
    Beau
    Good Job on the Platform...I like that u used the odd baud for a built in failsafe.

    I like it as well
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