My plywood night rover (def not Erco bait!)

tobdec · 2012-06-30 00:28

Here is my next robotic project. This time its mainly a large night rover. It is mainly going to be made of wood and fiberglass for looks. When completed it will be ran by a single Prop and be capable of long range surveilance up to 2 miles away from home with 2 way audio and video, night vision, HID headlights,RC and autonomous modes, GPS, and much more! Right now all I have is a rolling chassis but will be purchasing ESC's and gel-cell batts very soon. Any comments or suggestions?

P!-Ro · 2012-06-30 07:42

tobdec wrote: »

Any comments or suggestions?

Yeah, where's the C4?

Martin_H · 2012-06-30 07:57

It looks like it has serious load carrying capacity.

tobdec · 2012-06-30 08:37

Yea I can strap allot of C4 to it lol!

erco · 2012-06-30 10:54

Erco loves the wood! Less so the small front caster. That might work on a smooth concrete floor, but you say roaming 2 miles from home. Probably in the dirt, or bumpy driveways? You might do better with car-type steering than differential, using nice big tires all around.

tobdec · 2012-06-30 11:23

Money bro....thats what stopped me from doing it up right. I figure itl work in short grass and concrete. If anything a larger rubber air caster would probably make a world of difference.

tobdec · 2012-06-30 11:25

Martin_H wrote: »

It looks like it has serious load carrying capacity.

Yea Martin I plan on PACKING this thing with batteries so I had to make it pretty sturdy. I want to have the batteries last longer than the beer on my weekends for all out nerd-robo fun!

erco · 2012-06-30 11:34

It might work better running the caster in the back, sort of a Stingray configuration. And adding ground clearance is always a plus. Your deck looks pretty low now and you might bottom out or high-center on some terrain.

tobdec · 2012-06-30 11:44

That was the plan to drag the wheel behind me. I ve got 4" of ground clearance...should work for urban exploration. Im looking at batteries now.....soo many different chems to choose from and shaps and sizes....any suggestions erco?

erco · 2012-06-30 15:14

Lead acid is your cheapest option. Heavy, but bulletproof and easy to charge. You can locate them forward of your drive axle to take some weight off of your rear caster. You'll want ~80-90 % of your weight on your two drive wheels for best traction and minimum drag from your rear caster.

tobdec · 2012-06-30 15:57

I guess besides lead acid.....lipo has come a long way. Is it really THAT much more bang per square inch?

tobdec · 2012-07-05 16:37

Ok got my power taken care of...got a car battery and a large solar panel. I tested it today by hooking up the battery directly to the motors....I'd say it has enough power because it threw me off of it. As Erco mentioned earlier I need larger wheels and a much larger caster. Good ol' Harbor freight has some nice casters for a good price will be picking one up. My biggest issue is finding suitable drive wheels. Harbor freight has matching tires but they all have bearing in them and no clear cut way to mount them reliably.....any suggestions? I want pneumatic tires as it will be much more stable in offroad conditions.

P!-Ro · 2012-07-06 08:05

If you have a shaft the right diameter for the harbor freight wheels you can always get around the bearings by gluing them (or welding if thats an option) or you can take out the piece with the bearings and drill a whole through it and through your axle and pin it (may not work if your motors are too strong).

tobdec · 2012-07-06 14:43

I need an off the shelf option...these motors combined with the shear weight of my bot would destroy any riged solution.

agfa · 2012-07-07 03:47

Nice work! Tell me more about the gearmotors.

tobdec · 2012-07-07 10:58

Thanks agfa! Basically I grabed the gearmotors from one of those wal-mart style amigo power scooters. There was a mall back in my home town that went under and they sold the scooters for like 20 bucks a pop...so I bought one for robots and my uncle bought one to use. Ive tried finding more of these motors because they don't use much power at all and have insane amounts of power in them! The problem is they are soo old I can't find any info on them and the rest of the scooter got thrown away and my uncle sold his. I can tell you this though if you want powerful motors cheap get on craigslist...people sell darn near brand new power chairs for like under $200 that have bad batteries. Case and point...http://columbus.craigslist.org/for/3070734115.html I thought they were perfect because they propelled my 350 pound uncle without breaking a sweat!

edit: After looking at the motors they are branded CIM and have the Amigo logo on them...no model numbers are getting a hit on google.

P!-Ro · 2012-07-10 07:50

Something you may or may not be interested in is programming your robot via bluetooth. That's what I'll be doing with mine, although I haven't yet perfected it. I do have some new ones being sent to me though that look promising with rts/cts pins. Currently though I'm using the status led to software reboot the prop when the program in eeprom is run, and just program it to ram. Unfortunately it often requires trying to program it multiple times because the prop resets at the wrong time which is why I'm hopeful the bluetooth with the rts/cts pins will offer a better method of programming that doesn't require a program on the prop for it to reset.

tobdec · 2012-07-10 18:52

Martin has a solution bro! http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?139534-Wireless-Programming-of-a-Propeller-chip-%28video%29&highlight=wireless+programming+propeller

My plywood night rover (def not Erco bait!)

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