Dear friends welcome to another project video!
Today we are going to build an Arduino Powered
Robot.
It is a 3-wheeled robot, which can be controlled
by a remote control, or it can drive autonomously.
It is a very interesting project and a great
learning experience.
There is a lot to cover so let’s get started!
Hello guys, I am Nick and welcome to educ8s.tv
a channel that is all about DIY electronics
projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266
and other popular boards.
Today, we build a robot!
A robot that can be controlled by an Arduino
powered Remote control, or it can drive autonomously
and avoid the obstacles using an ultrasonic
sensor.
There is also an exploration mode available
where we can see the obstacle position in
real time on our computer screen.
Cool isn’t it?
Let’s start!
I discovered this 3-wheeled robot kit on ebay
a few weeks ago and it got my attention because
it has a very cool design and because it uses
Arduino and our familiar NRF24L01 wireless
modules.
The kit costs around 80Euros and it is developed
by a new company which is named freenove.
You can find a link for the kit in the description
of the video below.
Freenove was kind enough to send me a sample
unit in order to test it and share my opinion
about it with you.
The kit comes in box and inside it there is
everything you need.
There are a lot of parts, 2 Arduinos, 2 expansion
shields, 2 Motors, 2 Servo Motors, 2 NRF24L01
wireless modules, 3 wheels, the acrylic parts,
battery holders screws and screwdrivers.
The acrylic parts are very thick, so this
robot will be very durable.
Everything you need is inside this box, you
don’t even need a soldering iron in order
to build this project.
Please note, the kit does not contain batteries,
and it requires 4 18650 batteries, 2 for the
remote control and 2 for the robot.
The screws, the nuts and the washers are all
placed in some small plastic bags with labels
on them so everything is easily accessible
when you need it.
The kit does not contain a printed assembly
manual but there is a very detailed one available
online.
It comes as a 76 page pdf file!
The manual is so detailed that there is no
need to show you the assembly of the robot
in this video.
You are not going to face any problems at
all.
I think this is the most detailed manual I
have ever seen, good job freenove!
I think that this is very important because
even a newcomer can build this robot even
with no Arduino experience.
After about 2 hours the remote controlled
version of the robot is ready.
The electronics of the robot are very familiar.
It uses an Arduino Uno, a motor shield developed
by freenove and an NRF24L01 module in order
to receive commands from the remote control
and report back some data.
The remote control also uses an Arduino Uno,
and a custom made shield which has a joystick
and some buttons, switches and potentiometers.
As you can see, after programming both the
robot and the remote control with the Arduino
IDE, the project works great.
With the joystick of the remote control we
can drive the robot around with variable speed
if we wish!
It is very responsive and since we are using
2 18650 batteries, it is very fast as well.
I am really impressed by its performance and
the looks of it.
If you wish you can attach 2 more modules
to the robot.
The buzzer module and the RGB led module.
So, now by pressing down the joystick we can
enable the buzzer and we can change the colors
of the LED with these switches!
Nice, isn’t it!
Now, let’s build the autonomous robot.
We have to install the second servo and the
ultrasonic sensor and load the second sketch.
After powering up the robot, looks around,
measures the distance of the surrounding obstacles
and decides where to go.
It is really fun to watch driving around the
house itself.
Of course, since the robot uses Arduino as
its brains, we can write our own software
for it easily.
In this video I am using only the software
provided by the developer of the kit which
works fine.
The third sketch we can upload is the most
interesting one in my opinion.
We connect the remote control to the computer
and we run the Processing sketch which comes
with the robot.
You can find details on how to install Processing
to your computer and how to load this code
in the pdf manual of the robot kit.
Now, in the computer screen we can see live
data from the ultrasonic sensor on the robot.
The computer program visualizes the obstacles
on the screen as green dots.
So, we can drive the robot even without looking
at it, simply by looking at the computer screen,
as in the screen appears a representation
of the environment that the robot senses!
How cool is that!
So, we can navigate through the obstacles
without even looking at the robot.
Since the robot uses the NRF24L01 which operates
at the 2.4GHz band it can achieve a range
of about 20-50m.
If you wish to extend the range of the robot
you can use the long range NRF24L01 modules
with the signal amplifier chip and the external
antenna.
Freenove also offers a version of the kit
with these extended range modules.
For indoor use though, from my experience,
this robot kit is ideal, you don’t need
any extra range.
As a final thought, I really like this 3-wheeled
robot kit.
It is very well designed, it has a great assembly
manual, it offers 3 modes of operation, the
code of it is open source so you can easily
modify and extend it and it uses Arduino.
I think that by building this robot, you will
gain a deeper understanding of how simple
robots work.
I am going to study the code of the remote
control part of the project in order to use
some of the clever tricks the designer of
the kit uses in our future projects, so stay
tuned!
If you are new to the channel, I would love
to have subscribed by clicking on the channel
icon here, because every Saturday I post a
new video about DIY electronics and robot
projects.
Until next Saturday, watch, learn, build!
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