So I got my second hackerbox a few days ago and I have actuelly already uploaded an unpacking video on youtube. I quickly assembled the robot car chassis and started experimenting with different ways to control it. First off I build I made it into an analog light follower by using some resistors, diodes and photoresistors. It worked okayish. The problem was that the speed difference betwen max speed and when it was able to drive at all was very low, so I was able to make it turn towards the light, but it needed several meters to turn 90 degrees. Here is a link to my first iteration. I improved a bit on the light sensors over a few iterations, but nothing that was able to change my main problem, that it simply changed direction to slowly. Actuelly I just got an idea. Maybe if I build in a comperator, so if the light difference betwen the two sides where to big, then one motor would simply stop. . . Well that will be a project for a latter date.
After that I wanted to try and control it with an arduino. At first I wanted to control it with an arduino UNO or Nano. UNO, because then we where only using the stuff that came in the hackerbox or nano, because it would be cheaper if I one day wanted to recreate it with my students. But both arduinos needs either 5 volt regulated or at 7+ volt unregulated and the battery pack only supplied 5.9 volts unregulated. So I was just about to chabge the powerpacket when I remembered that I actuelly had an adafruit pro trinket board laying around. I was originally going to use it to build a cosmic turtle for my wife, but I used a Gemma instead because it fitted better. The pro trinket only needed 3.5 volt unregulated and can take up to 16 volts so there seem to be no problem with a 5.9 volt powersupply. The power regulator on the board doesn’t seem to get hot.
The arduino is much better at getting different speed levels out of the motors, but because of the pwm they are quiet a bit more noisy than before. Anyway I used the adafruit trinket and the photoresistors to first make a light follower robot. I then changed the program a small bit and made it into a robot that tried to get away from light sources. Nothing hard, but my wife found it rather cute how the robot got scared by the flash light.
I think my next step will be to take of the photoresistor sensors and see if I can control it using the remote control and IR sensor I got with the first hackerbox. I haven’t tried controling an arduino with an IR sensor before though, so it may take me some time to build and code it properly.
Arts and robotics 