1st Rover Project

[dalocogamer]

I recently just gave up on a old rc car. I gut it out to the point where I got the circuit board and DC motors still attached. I am thinking of taking these apart so I can have a DC motor to use for my first rover. This RC Car had two dc motors (one for moving and one for steering) so I am going to try for a track rover. One motor will be separate from the other motor. One motor controls one side. Here is my current thought for the layout:

I know I will need to have gears and wheels but this is just a outline of what I am going for. I am going to have the main board be in the middle of these two tracks. Any advice?

[ROBOTMAN]

Are you planing on using them original motors? A lot of times at least on the cars I have had they are different sizes; this would be a problem because one side would move faster than the other...

Also in your title you say you want to make a rover. What type; internet controlled, autonomous, light seeking? All of the above?

[dalocogamer]

I am using the two orignal motors that came from the same rc car. Im shooting for the moon with internet controlled. This includes a website you can vist and control and a WAN that would be at my use. Tread wheel, box body, dome top, and one airsoft 30mm cannon. To make this stand out I plan to make the body and dome all out of plexiglass. Im going to set up LED's inside that interacts with the rover.

I am looking on trossenrobotics store and this is looking good to me: http://www.trossenrobotics.com/p/ele...ee-shield.aspx
My wheels will be FF for stright, FB turn left, BF turn right, BB go reverse.
This rover when fished should be able to be controlled by internet, move wheels, and fire turret.

[ROBOTMAN]

Sweet! I love the concept of I.C.R.'s I built my own prototype a while back... http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?t=4240

Have you thought about adding a wifi based webcam for complete remote control? Trossen sells some nice ones but they are a bit expensive.

[dalocogamer]

I have seen the ones Trossen is selling. OUCH! I would love to have a wifi cam on mine. But putting my iphone on skype and setting inside seems to be a better idea lol. And this came to me, what if I put a front license plat on using LCD pannle that can stream text across for the oppent to look at lol. Here is a rough drawing (using MS paint).

[ROBOTMAN]

Lol that would be interesting... Do you plan on using it in a airsoft battle though? You would have to put the LCD screen behind plexiglass otherwise it would become a very breakable target.

If you want to add a LCD you should check out the arduino LCD shield here. To my knowledge LCD's can be tricky to control but I have never actually used one.

[dalocogamer]

If I can get a barbie jeep, yes I would use this for the sport of airsoft. My main focuse is for something like Mech Warfar in there rover division. Just having it around the house to tease the cat would be worth it. I think I would be fine with http://www.trossenrobotics.com/p/ele...ee-shield.aspx and jsut use XBee for the wireless control. Dont ya think so? Its the simple and cheap (compaired to a walker lol)

[ROBOTMAN]

Oh yeah for controlling the motors that would work excellent as long as you don't care about speed control.

[jRaskell]

Some advice on your track layout. In general, you're going to want your drive sprocket at one of the endpoints of the track. The tracks themselves need some small amount of slack, and putting the drive sprocket in the middle of the track as you have in your first diagram will be a recipe for a lot of slipping and possibly causing the track to jump off the sprockets. It also puts less strain on the sprocket teeth and track. In the middle of the track you only have a couple teeth at most fully engaged with the track. On one of the endpoints you will have 1/3 to 1/2 of all the sprocket teeth fully engaged with the track.

[dalocogamer]

I am looking now at having the motor be in the middle and having the wheels at each side of the motor have a gear that will rotate the motor. I have picked GM Motor Series Plastic Wheel Item #: M-400-30-GMPW from Trosenrobotics for the first set of test wheels to use. I am going to attach a gear to the end so it can turn with the motor.