Hi all,
Very very very very new to Arduino but so far I am finding it very fun, and rather easy!!!
I just.... don't know what to do with it now!! I've done the projects that came with the starter pack, I've hacked a small RC car which was fun but the fun soon went.
Can somebody suggest something different?
Thanks!
I suggest doing a line follower. It's a pretty common robot for newbies because it's not difficult and it is very fun to do. There are tons of documentation for line follower. In a few words, you will have to use IR leds for detecting black-white changes, and to control DC motors to follow the line.
Which Arduino do you have?
How about a RC car/truck/thing... that can parallel park itself. All you need to do is get it parallel to another object and park between said object and another one.
Build a mouse robot, to torment your cat.
Build a trick-or-treat robot, to collect candy on Halloween.
Build a messenger robot, to deliver notes to your siblings' bedroom.
Build a Cerino robot, to serenade your girlfriend.
Build a Lurch robot, to answer the door -- "You rang?"
...
I suggest buying some sensors and experiment so you learn how to use them. Adafruit or Spark Fun is a good place to get them, and they have a lot of support and tutorials available. I bet the ideas of what you could build will come to you!
I have built a robot using IR motion sensors that chases my dog, I used a WiFi shield to control my house lights from an Ipod. I used a gyro and sonic range finder and made an airplane that flys itself. An accelerometer to make a balancing robot. Temperature/humidity sensor, IR motion sensor and a Raspberry Pi to automate heating and cooling with remote control/monitoring from an Ipod. The possibility are endless.
Dave
Thanks everybody. I don't want to buy shields basically because I don't want to take it TOO far away from a production environment. If I bought the WiFi shield and decided to produce a saleable product, I wouldn't know how to go about WiFi without arduino.
I like the line follower idea. I have an arduino uno r3, I just can't get the right chassis to work on. My rc car is hackable but the motors are not controllable, for example no matter how much power I send to the motors, when the car is on the floor it is either not moving, or going too fast. I want a snails pace!
Thanks.
Marshiewoo:
Very very very very new to Arduino
Marshiewoo:
If I ... decided to produce a saleable product
Put that thought out of your head. You're nowhere near selling an Arduino-based product, and by the time you ever got to the position of having something fit to sell then the cost of a few standard Arduino components bought along the way would be irrelevant. Just buy what you need to solve the problems you want to solve.
Appreciate the honest responses.
How would be the best way to independently power two stepper motors with the ability to reverse, change speed etc....
Also, are stepper motors good for a slow movement robot?
Thanks
Decide what range of movement, speed and force/torque you want and especially what your requirements are for holding position against a sustained load, and whether you have any power/weight/size constraints. Stepper motors have their advantages, but tend to be relatively heavy and not particularly efficient - it may be that a different type of motor would be more suitable for your application.
Marshiewoo:
Appreciate the honest responses.How would be the best way to independently power two stepper motors with the ability to reverse, change speed etc....
Also, are stepper motors good for a slow movement robot?
You can hack your rc car to regulate speed with pwm. There are lots of tutorial for pwm on dc motor.
If you want wheels go in reverse use an H-bridge.
The line follower idea is good, are there ways to further expand it once I have done it? Obviously line following is an "easy" thing so after I've done it I will get bored, I would like the car to inteligently run around the house.
Can somebody suggest something different?
I suggest you go to youtube and type "arduino robot" in the youtube search box and look at all the projects others have made. You should get some ideas to work with.
Marshiewoo:
The line follower idea is good, are there ways to further expand it once I have done it? Obviously line following is an "easy" thing so after I've done it I will get bored, I would like the car to inteligently run around the house.
It can be expandible as you wish. You talk about doing it and getting bored of it because its simple, yet you are new and have never doing something like this. You'll learn a lot in the process as it is not as easy as its seen. Thats why yoh should do something simple before doing a robot that wanders around the house.
Regards.
I'm just using photo resistors on my RC car to detect the line. Is this okay?
IR Photo transistors are much better, they must be together with a IR led emitter.