Power Wheels conversion to RC car
Hello,
I am a student working with a group to design and construct our senior capstone project. We plan to take a Power Wheel children's battery power car and turn it into a RC car with some bells and whistles. We are still in the planning and beginning of the design stage and I am looking for some insight on the best way to do things. The 10,000 foot view consists of 3 major components: a wireless camera mounted to the vehicle to allow for remote operation, a GUI application to display the camera view along with vehicle speed, RPM, remaining battery life, and with any luck a GPS position overlaid on a local map, and the vehicle itself. In doing preliminary research I found that Parallax seems to offer the various hardware needed to create this thing. On the vehicle I think (looking for suggestions) we will need a PWM controller like the HB-25 to control the speed of the existing DC motor. Possibly a Hall affect sensor to measure RPM, a stepper of servo motor to integrate into the steering and a controller for it, a GPS, ultrasonic sensors to use for anti-collision detection, a wireless camera, and a micro-controller to handle I/O's. The GUI application would run on a laptop or tablet (depending on the available ports) and a game controller would be used to control the vehicle from the same location as the laptop.
I have not decided on the best way to handle the PC interface's or the wireless architecture. I think that I will need to have a separate input to the PC from the camera because of available baud rate on the wireless connection between the micro-controller and the PC. I am also thinking that it will be easier to use a game controller with a USB interface to the laptop rather than have another wireless interface to the PC or directly to the micro-controller. I have not settled on a particular micro-controller at this point either. I think the best way to go is to have all of the logic run on the micro-controller rather than on the PC. I have a Freescale Tower with a AXM-0606 RevB Board (ADC/DAC converter), a AXIOM-MC9S12G128 micro-controller, and a TWR-DEV-PERIPH board; this is a modular development kit so I can get other boards to integrate with it. But, I am not sure it has the horse power to handle the job.
As I said,I am still in the early stages of the design so I am looking for suggestions from more experienced hands.
I am a student working with a group to design and construct our senior capstone project. We plan to take a Power Wheel children's battery power car and turn it into a RC car with some bells and whistles. We are still in the planning and beginning of the design stage and I am looking for some insight on the best way to do things. The 10,000 foot view consists of 3 major components: a wireless camera mounted to the vehicle to allow for remote operation, a GUI application to display the camera view along with vehicle speed, RPM, remaining battery life, and with any luck a GPS position overlaid on a local map, and the vehicle itself. In doing preliminary research I found that Parallax seems to offer the various hardware needed to create this thing. On the vehicle I think (looking for suggestions) we will need a PWM controller like the HB-25 to control the speed of the existing DC motor. Possibly a Hall affect sensor to measure RPM, a stepper of servo motor to integrate into the steering and a controller for it, a GPS, ultrasonic sensors to use for anti-collision detection, a wireless camera, and a micro-controller to handle I/O's. The GUI application would run on a laptop or tablet (depending on the available ports) and a game controller would be used to control the vehicle from the same location as the laptop.
I have not decided on the best way to handle the PC interface's or the wireless architecture. I think that I will need to have a separate input to the PC from the camera because of available baud rate on the wireless connection between the micro-controller and the PC. I am also thinking that it will be easier to use a game controller with a USB interface to the laptop rather than have another wireless interface to the PC or directly to the micro-controller. I have not settled on a particular micro-controller at this point either. I think the best way to go is to have all of the logic run on the micro-controller rather than on the PC. I have a Freescale Tower with a AXM-0606 RevB Board (ADC/DAC converter), a AXIOM-MC9S12G128 micro-controller, and a TWR-DEV-PERIPH board; this is a modular development kit so I can get other boards to integrate with it. But, I am not sure it has the horse power to handle the job.
As I said,I am still in the early stages of the design so I am looking for suggestions from more experienced hands.
Comments
For the video you should look at using an IP camera and wireless router. It's a simple, inexpensive, and reliable way of getting the video to the laptop.