Making a tiny rover by using a remote brain

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alexcroox
 
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Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2013 4:38 pm

Making a tiny rover by using a remote brain

Post by alexcroox »

I'd like to build a robot as small as possible and with as few "delicate" parts as possible (the bots will be bashing into each other).

I was wondering if it was possible to use a small chip that could receive bluetooth/IR/wifi commands to move the motors, and in turn, send back feedback based on sensors such as an accelerometer (to detect impact).

I can probably achieve something like this with the PiCy

Image

however this is slightly bigger than I'd like (due to the size of the Pi) and I'm not sure how long the Pi would last taking continuous impacts.

I'd therefore like to try to offset the brain (the Pi) to the side of the arena and just use a small chip to receive move commands, and send back data from the accelerometer. The advantage of this is that I could use one controller to command multiple bots (just send and receive info with a unique ID).

Do you have any recommendations for such a chip? Wifi would be my choice but if it impacts the size I could try BT

Edit: After further research it seems an Arduino nano with a WiFi RedBack shield might do the job along with something like this for the motors: http://www.gravitech.us/2mwfecoadfor.html Still a little large due to the motor controller but I guess that's expected?

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