Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Building first robot

Status
Not open for further replies.

Duster

New Member
I am wanting to build my first robot this summer. I would like to use a pic with programing to control it but i need to take some baby steps to get to that point first.

I figure that i should design the base of the robot nothing more then wheels and battery's. I think that i should start by just inputting the directions to the motors and what not before i start using a pic. I think that i should use 2 motors one for each of the back wheels and just one wheel in the fron that rotats. That way i can basically turn each motor on/off for direction and inverse the input to motor for reverse, and was thinking of using say a switch for each thing( i.e. if 1,2,3,4 are high motors 1 and 2 forward if 1,2 are high and 3,4 low motor 1 forward and motor 2 off) or something to that effect. I am not set on how i am going to do this so if i am going in the wrong direction plz tell me.

Basically there are alot of websites i have read but none i have found focus on the real basics. I would like to know what kind of motor i need to look for, what kind of ic that might help me accomplish this goal of inputs and outputs as i described above or should i use pic. And any websights that i should look at that might be helpful if you have any. Thanks for any help you can give.
 
I myself am thinking of doing something like this. I'll share with you a few little hints.

A-do lean towards using a PIC. It may not be economic to write your code up for the first time so i would advise you to look for some on the internet

B-with the base i would recommend if it is not going to be run on carpet to go for a two wheeled design. so that it doesnt completely loose its balance put some rests(just wire bent to shape) on the bottom. I am making my base circular with the wheels centered so that it is easier to control and manuver

C-when you are talking about the swithes i think you are talking about a H-bridge. they are the most common things that people use to control motors. they can either be made from transistors or a dedicated IC(I'm not sure but i think that there was a tutorial that used an IC from the 74 series IC's)

Hope this helps

Kieran
 
if you don't know anything about pic programming i suggest that you fist tries to blink whit som leds an small experiments before you starts with your robots.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top