Guidance on project

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi all,

Looking for a bit of direction here if possible, any help would be much appreciated as I'm approaching deadline day for my uni project. I'm currently waiting on a couple of motors arriving along with a 2 wheel drive chassis.

My intention is to have a wall avoiding robot.

The parts I already have are as follows:

Arduino Uno
Arduino Motor Shield
Parallax Ping sensor
4x1.5v battery case for external supply for the motors
9v battery with jack for the Uno itself

Pictured here: http://i.imgur.com/7XqG9.jpg

What I'm looking to find out is the following:

Where do I connect the Ping sensor to (Uno or motor shield)?
What would I use to connect the different pins on the Ping sensor (would this be a 3 pin cable or some other method)?
Where on the motor shield do I connect the 2 motors to?
Where on the motor shield do I connect the external power supply?

Once I have the pictured parts hooked up with the chassis/motors, is there anything else that I need that I might have missed out on or would I be good to go to run the code?

Complete amateur here so try not to be too harsh, I'm willing to learn with the right guidance.

Thanks very much in advance.

2

Where do I connect the Ping sensor to (Uno or motor shield)?

Put the motor shield on the UNO, then connect the Ping sensor to some unused pin, as defined here:
http://arduino.cc/playground/Code/Ping

What would I use to connect the different pins on the Ping sensor (would this be a 3 pin cable or some other method)?

Wire would work.

Where on the motor shield do I connect the 2 motors to?

The proper places. See those screw terminals along the bottom of the picture? There's text next to them, and I bet you got an instruction manual.

Where on the motor shield do I connect the external power supply?

Same answer.

is there anything else that I need that I might have missed out on or would I be good to go to run the code?

Well, first you need to write the code...

3

pretty much a perfect answer there just know the pinnouts for the arduino, and the shield, and read lables if their are none get us a higher res picture so we may be able to see.