Monday, February 22, 2016

Advanced RCcontroller project (BogieRuntRover)

In my previous posts we have seen RCcontroller connect via bluetooth or socketIO but we did not control something cool. This time, we are going to take things to a new level. We will control a little rover with RCcontroller. I don't talk too much so let's get started.

For this project, we need:
  1. A toy car fitted with DC motors. Mine is the BogieRuntRover from ServoCity.
  2. An analog camera. This helps us see where we are going.
  3. A servo gimbal for the camera.
  4. An analog video transmitter-receiver pair. Mine has a range of 2km.
  5. A video capture device. I recommend the Diamond VC500. This will convert the analog video signals to digital so that we can stream the video with our linux computer.
  6. Adafruit's GPS ultimate. Helps us find BogieRuntRover when she gets missing.
  7. Adafruits 10 DOF accelerometer. To give us our robot's euler angles.
  8. Arduino DUE. This will be the brain of BogieRuntRover.
  9. A pair of Xbees. This is for serial communication.
  10. A pair of Xbee adapters to configure and test the xbees. I recommend SainSmart Xbee adapters.
  11. An H-bridge. I recommend the L298 Dual H-Bridge.
  12. 3 11.1V lipo batteries.
  13. A lipo charger. I have the Turnigy Accucel-6.
  14. A custom shield for the Arduino DUE. Get the eagle files here.
  15.  Stackable headers for the shield and some male and female headers.
  16. A few jumper wires.

Get the Arduino code from here.You might also need these libraries.
You can also download the controller JSON file (for RCcontroller): BogieRuntRover.json
Download with your smartphone and open it with RCcontroller to automatically load the controller.

 See the video below to know how everything looks after setup:




This video shows BogieRuntRover in action: