Still Alive...!

Man...! It has been 2 years since the last time I tried to write something.

Actually I did complete part of the robot. However, my computer went out of order and I lost all the source codes, pictures and everything. The BASIC STAMP was also damaged, for reasons I couldnot understand. And I had already dismantled the project.

This blog is actually meant as a medium for me to document all my doings. Hence I will try to put something on the robot project as well as other projects. There were also several other projects that I completed during this past years. The robot car, the stroboscope using LEDs, engine rpm counter/display (on laptop), engine lambda reader and water pump (hand operated) using PVC pipes.

First on the robot toy car project.

As I can remember it the following are the items used.
1. BASIC STAMP as the main controller (I don't know the price, maybe a few hundreds ringgits. There is cheaper option, using PIC microcontroller. PIC16F676 would be appropriate for RM9 only - 1k program memory, ADC, 12 IO ports)
2.L293D for motor driver (RM13)
3. light sensitive resistor. I don't know the porper name of this thing.... oh ya photoresistor?
4. resistors (RM0.05each)
5. capacitors(RM0.30 each)
6. breadboard for constructing thecircuit (RM15)
7. The RC car. battery operated. (RM50?)

One of the trouble with the operation was that the motor (DC motor) was quite powerful and draw a lot of current. The battery pack need to be adequate. I remember using 2 separate source of power for the STAMP and the motor. Otherwise the motor would draw so much current that the STAMP stopped working.

The other issue was the turning radius of the car. This made it to lost track of the light easily. In most wheeled robots, the robotcan turn on its axis and face the light. The way I overcame this is by having the car to make very fast three point turns everytime it sense that the light was lighter on one side. It is fun to see it making small three point turns in very rapid movement. Effectively one can see the robot to shake and turn towards the light source.

Unfortunately all the source codes were missing. I will see whether I can salvage the source codes from my old hard disk and post it here.

Next post will describe the toy car, its drive motor and the steering system.