INTRODUCTION
Hello Reader, I’m Alfin, a rising Junior at Archbishop Mitty High School. I love to design and work on projects at home, but this is my first project I’ve ever done that has involved soldering, coding, and wiring on a fairly big scale. My projects include a watch kit, and a RC Tank controlled by a Ps2 Controller/ultrasonic sensor and Arduino. This is the blog/webpage of my projects that I have built at Bluestamp Engineering.
2nd MILESTONE
I’m back with my RC Arduino Tank. Previously I had my tank controlled by a PS2 Controller but my current modification allows for the tank to move on its own with the help provided by an ultrasonic sensor. The basic idea involves the Sensor sending out a signal and as it waits for a response, the time taken to ping back is then converted to a distance, in my case that will be centimeters. The distance is then computed by Arduino and the commands to the motors and then sent to go forward, backward, or turn. Some complications involved the code, the pin configuration. The code presented some initial problems. There was a delay set in the code for the ultra sonic sensor, but the delay caused the ultrasonic sensor as a whole to stop working. This resulted in the tank not working because the Arduino did not have the proper information from the ultrasonic sensor to send a command to the motors. Another problem included the pin configuration as the ultrasonic sensor and servo clashed with the motor pins. But through some trouble shooting, the tank is able to run successfully without any help from the user.
CODE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7bidymatdytih9/autonomous_jul15a.ino?dl=0
1st MILESTONE
CODE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9s7a867fwjizkyk/sketch_jun17a.ino?dl=0
I’m Alfin, and this is my main project, the Arduino Tank, controlled by a Ps2 controller. This tank consists of multiple parts that allow it to move around and about. The tank itself is managed and computed by Arduino. Arduino receives the data signals from the ps2 controller (via. the receiver) and sends motor commands to the motor shield which in turn sends commands to the motors to move forward, backward and to turn left and right. Some major complications I ran into involved me not having the proper library in my code for the motor shield (this meant I didn’t have the proper motor commands to send to the motors to make them functional), I also had badly soldered the jumper cables from the receiver to the motor shield, which meant the controller ended up not communicating with the Arduino, lastly, learning how to code in general (me being new to this side of engineering, I was completely new to coding and I got a good base off this first milestone).
STARTER PROJECT
I’m Alfin, and this is my starter project which is the SparkFun Big Time Watch Kit. This kit came with all the parts needed (capacitors, resistors, displays, etc.) and with just a little bit of soldering the kit comes alive with a blue, 4 digit, 7 segment LED display. There was a persistent problem in the display because of a bad solder, once the the pin was properly soldered the kit was perfect. Through this mini project, I was able to learn how to solder, learn all the electronics (and how they work), which enabled me to go deeper into the world of electronics. This was a good stepping stone for my main project, the Arduino Ps2 Tank.
