I had a second cheap and simple soldering project to finish which I had bought roughly a month ago. It's a simple robot that uses two vibrating DC motors as "legs" and has two photoresistors as eyes. If it senses no light, it stops. If both photoresistors sense lights both motors turn on and the bug charges forward. If one photoresistor senses light and the other one does not, the one in the dark turns off the motor to the opposite (i.e., the light-facing) side, causing the bug to pivot back toward the light. It also has two potentiometers to allow one to calibrate the sensitivity of the photoresistors on both sides so it can follow, for example, a flashlight beam on the floor of a dark room.
That's the theory. In practice, the alignment of the photoresistors and the calibration of the potentiometers is a little difficult. As you'll see, I can generally get it to follow light, but it often goes in circles or senses stray reflections and heads into corners and gets stuck. I could probably spend some time to calibrate it better, but I did it for the soldering practice rather than to create a robot I could steer acurately.
Due to the locomotion system, it's useless on carpet. But as you'll see, it's surprisingly fast on my kitchen floor.
Brief Intro:
Showing the difficulties of steering the bug:
Charge!:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment