Sunday, December 13, 2015

Our New Robot Overlords

Just a quick post about my latest project. For many years I've wanted to create an autonomous wheeled robot but only recently have I had the time and cheap parts to try and pull it off. That and I needed a project for my Raspberry Pi.

I've bought so far:

  • Raspberry Pi
  • 4WD Robot
  • Two driver modules to power the DC motors on the robots platform
  • USB Wifi dongle for remote control
  • Optical sensors to detect wheel speed from the wheel encoders that came with the platform  
What I've assembled so far is:
  • Mounted motors onto platform
  • Mounter driver modules onto platform
  • Wired up motors to the modules
  • Wired up one pair of motors to the Pi
  • Wired up the batteries for the motors
  • Mounted the optical sensor onto one encoder disk
  • Tested PWM output to the motors. Slowest value is 40/255. Any lower any the motor won't turn with no load.  Motors need a value of around 85/255 to start turning at all but can then be dropped down. Of course with load it takes about 128/255 (50% Duty) to push. 
Lots more to do. Next up, sensing speed with the optical sensor. 


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