JohnnyBot's on a Roll!!

 Much work has been done on the bot over the last month, after getting some new motors and wheels the robot is finally wired up.

I was going to go with the body that I created out of floor boards and then cover the outside with cut aluminum. But after looking at the price of motors and the different options available, I found a good deal on an entire lower chassis. This chassis is almost perfect for my testing purposes but budget constraints are what they are.

After checking out various rover platforms, I think I like the dagu tracked chassis the best and may upgrade to that chassis later on down the road.

The deal I got was the chassis, an arduino mega, new motorshield, and sensor shield. It also included the motors, and a battery holder (6AA for a total of 9V). As well as an additional UltraSonic Sensor.

The instruction manual was very poorly written, and after hooking up the motorshield under the chassis and hooking up the batteries, the entire thing started on fire and much of the electronics suffered from smoke damage.

I figure it was a faulty shield, as I had everything insulated and routed properly in the chassis, but after testing some of the other electronics, the damage was contained within the chassis itself. So, maybe it wasn't the best deal after all, as it almost burnt down the entire robot, but I had another mshield around that I knew actually worked so I hooked it up, did some experiments and the robot was back on task.

I decided to use the mega as the main controller for now, because there simply isn't a way to attach the computer to the bot yet, as space is limited. In the future, I plan to add a few risers, and maybe a plate to cover the whole thing to get it up and running with wifi and text to speech and all that other fancy stuff.

I also built some electrical components that are onboard JohnnyBot, some of these include the UltraViolet Headlights and BrakeLights, a Piezo Buzzer that I'm using for exhaust sounds right now. And some photoresistors that are used for photovorious activities.

Much of this was as simple as connecting 330 ohm resistors to anodes, and 1K's for the CaS, I think I used a 10K for the Piezo that was attached via cathode. Pretty easy stuff really.

Much of the robot uses velco for holding stuff on, as it doesn't really move too fast. I'm currently modified my custom chassis for increased damage control and stability but this base works well for development purposes. I'm thinking about using 18V drill motors for the final version of the robot, or maybe some brushless 450 helicopter motors with ESC's via RF. The brushless motors would be lighter and fairly inexpensive but wouldn't hold up if the chassis was very heavy. Drill motors would allow for less control, but far more torque. They are also more expensive, but I plan to scour garage sales this summer for a solution for this.

Another thing that I still need is some sort of remote control, as my bluetooth shield from Seeeed went kaput. I'm thinking of just getting a cheap slave, then upgrading to a silver smirf, or maybe gold in the future to fit the needs of the project.

Anyway, that's all for now. Leave some comments, as there are none. Thanks :)