How to make robot car at home(with pictures)

Have you ever dreamed to make your own robot car to run around? Just with a few electronics parts, even if you are new in a DIY robotics project, take the chance to practice your DIY hands-on ability, what's more, if you are the parents, you can enjoy the moment with your kids to build your own robot car at home.

一、Things you need

Firstly, please have the things you need ready:

1*Robot car chassis kit

1*Driver board

1*Lithium battery

1*WIFI Module

1*WIFI Board Power Cord

1*Robot Enhancement

1*USB Camera

1*Robotic Arm (With Servo)

 

二、Start the wiring

1. Let's start with a driver board interface diagram for easy reference.

2.let's take a look at the two terminals on my chassis, which is 2wd with an 8v drive motor on the left and right, I've cited the terminals for easy access to our drive board showed as below.

3. Now, put the lithium-ion battery that drives the motor into the body, then cover the bottom plate and draw out the motor wiring and the charging port and the lithium-ion output.

4. Now we have to wire the driver board, strongly recommends that novices must take a good look at the driver board instructions post and the driver board behind the pin instructions, otherwise it is extremely easy to connect the wrong wire and lead to burn board accidents so that the loss will outweigh the gain.

4.1). Connect power input：

Please note that the power supply are red for positive, black for negative, connected to the driver board as shown in the picture, do not reverse ah, or shoot through the chip on the tragedy.

4.2). Connect the motor output port

As shown above, the motor output port on the back of the board is marked A+ A-, B+ B-, a total of two pairs of output, if it is a four-wheeled cart, the left left and right two parallel can be connected.

As for the wiring order, don't worry about it, just connect it and say, if you find that the motor is reversed when debugging, you can directly modify the instruction of the upper computer to correct.

4.3). Connect the servo

For the servo driver WALL-E, video head, small robot, these servos can be directly connected to the driver board servo interface, now I'll connect a servo for demonstration. There are 5 common servo interfaces on the driver board, if you need to use more servos, please go to our driver board source code download post to download the 8-way servo driver and upgrade it yourself.

Make sure you get the positive and negative poles on the servo, and don't make a mistake.

4.4).Installation of the PTZ

The gimbal is actually a directional rotation mechanism consisting of two servos, and after we install the camera on it, we can control the up, down, left and right movement of the camera through the upper unit, so that we can observe the situation around the robot without moving the car body.

As shown below, this is the head of the 9G servo, whether it's the 9G servo or the 55G servo, it can be directly connected to the studio driver board without the need to go through the servo enhancements.

The connection of the PTZ is the same as the above servo connection, but there is one point to note, the upper computer of the studio supports direct dragging the mouse to control the movement of the PTZ in the video screen, if you need to use this function, then you need to upgrade the lower computer program, upgrade to 8-way servo program, and then the two servos of the PTZ are connected to the drive plate servo 7, servo 8 position, in order to drag the screen directly to control the PTZ.Showed as below:

If it is a very large robot or a servo with heavy load, it cannot be directly connected to the servo control port on the drive board, it needs to be coupled with the following very large servo enhancement board (ordinary servo head is not needed).

Okay, let's start by attaching the oversized servo enhancement plate and the wired drive plate to the hull:.

There are 6 terminals behind the 5 servo outputs on the drive board, the rightmost of which is the GND, the rest are the 5 logical interfaces for the servos, we need to connect the GND first.

The remaining five terminals, in turn, are connected to the five logical interfaces on the servo enhancement board, as shown in Fig.

Now, to power the servo enhancement board, it is recommended to use a separate LiPo to power the servo enhancement board in case the large servo is operating with too much current causing the LiPo to produce a protective action.

The next step is how to connect the servo cable to the servo augmentation plate, as shown below, noting the positive and negative poles.

The other several servos are similarly connected. The servo supply voltage on the servo augmentation board is adjustable, and the blue variable resistor on the board can be augmented if you find it difficult to drive the servos, but be careful not to supply more than 6.5V to the servos in general.

4.5). Connect the WIFI module

Okay, the basic components are in place, now it's time for the final step, installing the wifi module.

As shown above, the TTL serial port of the WIFI module is connected to the TTL serial port of the driver board, GND to GND, TX to TX, RX to RX, a total of three wires, not difficult, right? If you can not tell which is TX which is RX, it does not matter, the first connected to GND, TX RX randomly connected, and so will debugging, if you find that the command did not respond, then exchange the TX RX wiring on the line. (The wiring in this figure only indicates the location of the driver board serial port, which WIFI board on the black line is GND, should be received on the driver board yellow line location, please be flexible.

Then there is the power supply part of the WIFI module, using the ordinary USB to MINI USB interface, one end is connected to the MINI USB port of the WIFI module, the other end is connected to the USB port of the driver board, as shown below.

Of course, if you've made modifications to your own WIFI module to bring the TTL cable over to the MINI USB port, then you can connect the TTL serial port without a Dupont cable, because the driver board supports USB power and TTL communication in one.

4.6).Connect the camera and connect the USB camera's USB port to the USB port on the WIFI module.

All right! It's done! The rest of the layout is up to the individual, isn't it simple? All the complicated stuff the studio has built for you, all you have to do is put it together like a toy ~ just play with it~.

Finally, a photo of the finished Land Rover WIFI robot and the WALL-E WIFI robot~!