Hello I've been researching the web and I can't seem to find the answers. I have all the parts for my project but I'm not sure if what I'm thinking about will work. Thank you for your time.
x 3 Omni directional wheels
x3 continuous rotation servo
x1 triangular base
x1 ArduinoUno (I also have a Mega2560)
x1 Arduino Motor shield
x1 Arduino Ethernet shield (saving up for a WiFi shield)
x1 Parallax LCD
a bunch of wires
a bunch of breadboards
photosensor
DTH22
PIR sensor
battery case
a sound sensor
My wife is 8 months pregnant and she wants me to start getting ready for the baby instead of tinkering with my Arduino. I don't think I will be able to finish my dream robot before my baby is born. Please help
My goal is to make a tri wheel robot where I can put my working IP camera, (I understand I need a separate power supply for this) and I will be able to control the triangular base via WiFi. The ones that I see online just have two wheels, I really prefer the three wheel version. I also need it to be able to move by itself on occasion by using the photo/PIR/sound sensor. Someday when I'm good enough, I plan on buying this robotic arm mount found on ebay and I'm wondering if I would be able to incorporate that with my robot. Is this all possible or am I just aiming for too much. Thank you for your time.
But I seriously (very seriously) doubt that you will find exactly what you want. Start by making a list of the robotic subsystems:
Obstacle avoidance
Remote arm
Three drive wheels
WiFi command state/status
Etc.
Then, go out and find good examples of code. Build a prototype of just that subsystem and check the code. If you like it, use a spreadsheet to document ports, pins, protocols, libraries, etc. You will need this later when you combine sketches into a final software system.
Repeat for each subsystem.
Combine the code, in the order of priority! Be smart here.
Evolve the code.
I'm not trying to be rude, but no one is going to stop what they're doing and code this for you. The forum is here to help people, but please realize, it's not just a whole pool of engineers and programmers waiting for someone to give them a project.
What all of us can and will do for you is this: If you run into a specific stumbling block somewhere, post what you're doing, what problem you're having, and what you've done to try and resolve it. You will usually get suggestions or help moving forward. But you really have to whittle it down to something small and easily digestible by someone with a few minutes to kill.
To put things into perspective: If any one person spends more than maybe 15 minutes on a post, that's a pretty special thing. I would imagine most people who reply have probably dedicated less than 5 minutes to it before moving on, and often less than that, unless it really grabs their interest for some reason. Keep that in mind when you ask questions. You're asking for considerable development time to achieve what you're trying to do. The best you could hope for is maybe someone has done something similar (but your requirements are kinda specific) and can point you to their project online.
Hope this helps. Good luck .. with the upcoming autonomous critter, and the robot.
SirNickity:
But you really have to whittle it down to something small and easily digestible by someone with a few minutes to kill.
To put things into perspective: If any one person spends more than maybe 15 minutes on a post, that's a pretty special thing. I would imagine most people who reply have probably dedicated less than 5 minutes to it before moving on, and often less than that, unless it really grabs their interest for some reason. Keep that in mind when you ask questions.
Bravo.
This should be a STICKY or "tip of the day"
x 3 Omni directional wheels
x3 continuous rotation servo
x1 triangular base
x1 ArduinoUno (I also have a Mega2560)
x1 Arduino Motor shield
x1 Arduino Ethernet shield (saving up for a WiFi shield)
x1 Parallax LCD
a bunch of wires
a bunch of breadboards
photosensor
DTH22
PIR sensor
battery case
a sound sensor
Most of these things are, for most people, difficult things to make (or at least, difficult to make at reasonable cost).
Software is, on the other hand, just a bunch of symbols on a screen.
In many ways, it is easier to play with than Lego.
Thank you everyone for the response, I didn't assume that people were going to code for me though. I was mainly looking for the base code of a triwheel robot and go from there. I was just curious if all off those things that I listed above would be possible or if someone else already did it. Like a super multi tasking arduino robot, instead of having 4 different arduinos with specific tasks. I've gone through tons of videos on YouTube and I admire the work of everyone has put in. I'm also getting discouraged because those all seem very complex. Again, thanks everyone for their 2 cents.
Yes, a full autonomous robot is a complex project. But nobody (OK, almost nobody) builds one because they have no better plans for a rainy Saturday. It's a process that takes time. It's complex when you look at it from 10,000 feet, but think about one little part and it's not so bad.
Look into H-bridge projects for instance. This is the basis for getting something to move with electric motors. It's well documented and not hard to do. You can manage that. Once you have a little project where you can press a button and make something move forward, document what you've done, and move on to another part. Ping sensors, for example. Learn how to detect how far the sensor is from your hand. Then put these two projects together -- press a button and have something move forward until the ping sensor gets within a couple feet of a surface.
Keep finding out how to do small things, and add that to your project. Tweak it over time. With interrupts and state machines, one Arduino can do a lot of stuff "simultaneously". (It's not really simultaneous, but that's almost never important provided it can change tasks quickly and often enough.)
This is really the only way to fly. If you take a complete project and duplicate it, you probably have no idea how it works. Changing something could be like pulling the last block from a Jenga stack. If you understand the parts, and how they fit together, you can do anything you want.
Don't expect that to happen in one month though...
Don't be discouraged. Start small. Play with getting the wheels going, nothing else. When you get good at that, start learning servos. Keep doing this. Learn little projects at a time, and learn to code them individually. Do not copy and paste, write the code out by visually copying the code(learn to write it this way),
Small projects my friend, and slowly integrate. My first and current arduino project is a robotic arm built from scratch! It has taken me several month on my weekends to as far as I have. But it started by learning to control a servo by potentiometer, then controlling a stepper motors speed and stepping. Then I taught myself LCD (thank you Raschemmel) and I'm almost done. I even burnt out an UNO doing this! But I learned from mistake.
Stay motivated! Learn the coding yourself, buy books, and if course if you hit the wall, this forum is awesome. Just don't take advantage of their good nature!
