Robot RC Tank

My main project was an RC robot tank which is controlled by a PS2 controller. I chose this project because I wanted to learn and practice electrical and mechanical engineering. I also wanted to learn about Arduino.

Engineer

Wilton Z.

Area of Interest

Electrical and Mechanical Engineering

School

Gateway High School

Grade

Incoming Junior

Final Milestone

My final milestone was writing in code to let the PS2 controller control the motor movements. I continued to add to my previous code from my second milestone. my first struggle was when I was connecting the wires, I accidentally soldered the wire into the 5v area instead of 3v so I had to get a whole new wire to fix it. My other struggle was trying to figure out how to let the controller control the motors. I learned that the code I got was for a different motor shield. I had to learn and understand new code for the Adafruit motor shield I had. Once I had learned it, I was able to write code that worked alongside the PS2 controller.

Second Milestone

My second milestone was getting the motors to turn using code input into the Arduino Uno circuit board. I learned and input code that could make the motors turn forward and backwards and decide which motor would turn. I started with a DC Motor example code and added to it to include the other motor. I used an Adafruit motor shield to plug in the motors to the Arduino. The motor shield helped move the motors forward and the h-bridge chip allows the current to change direction through a series of transistors to change motor direction. I plugged the motors into the terminals on the motor shield which communicated with the headers connected on the Arduino.

First Milestone

My first milestone was building the chassis. I used a Tamiya universal board, Tamiya track and wheel set, and a Tamiya double gear box. These were easy to assemble because of the instructions included and the internet. Some of the parts were too big to fit into the universal board so instead of screwing the gearbox to the board, I had to zip-tie it. The tracks were also very tight agains the wheels so I had to squeeze it around the wheels.

Starter Project

My Starter Project is MintyBoost Charger from Adafruit which runs on AA batteries. This includes five resisters, 2 electrolytic capacitors, 2 ceramic capacitors, one diode, an IC chip, and one inductor. The 3 volts that come from AA batteries is not enough so the device is basically a boost converter. The integrated chip takes the volts from the AA batteries and turn its switch on and off. This makes the inductor create and destroy it’s own magnetic field and reverse it polarity to maintain a constant current which leads to and increase of 5 volts. The newly increases volts are stabilized by the capacitors and the diode sends the current one way to the phone to charge.

https://learn.adafruit.com/minty-boost/solder-it