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Car Races
This was a partner project for my robotics class. The objective was to build a robotic car that holds a phone and drives remotely back to a classroom from within the building. Our tank was controlled using a Raspberry Pi Pico that received signals through the internet.
Hardware
On the right is our tank with its lid removed. Inside, you can see the RaspberryPi Pico, an L298N dual H-bridge motor driver, two 12V motors, and batteries to power the motors. Additionally, we used a portable charger to power the Pico.
Why the L289N's?
We chose to use the L289N motor driver because we were familiar with its setup having used it for a previous class, it had online code for connecting it with a joystick, and it was very easy to debug. The ease of debugging turned out to be particularly useful as our motors did not work when we first wired them.
Waterjet and Lasercut Components
The bottom of the tank is made out of scrap aluminum sheetmetal which was waterjet and then bent into shape. The lid and phone stand are acrylic, and the treads were bought from Amazon. The majority of the tank was fabricated for a previous class, and the phone stand was a modification to fit this project. Both of the designs were made in OnShape.
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Sheetmetal Chassis Design
Acrylic Phone Stand
Suctions cups without phone attached
Attaching the Phone
To drive the car remotely back to the classroom, our professor encouraged us to utilize a phone camera and FaceTime our partners to see where the robot is. This meant we needed to devise an attachment for the phone to the tank
Suction Cups
When brainstorming ideas, we found suction cups in the makerspace, and decided to use these in our design because they efficiently elevated the phone off the surface of the tank for an optimal view. Additionally, we liked the way the suction cups looked like eyes and gave our tank a Wall-E like appearance. I lasercut an acrylic phone stand to hold the suction cups, and bent two pieces of makerbeam hardware to attach the acrylic plate to the tank.
Suctions cups in action
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