Raspberry pi, arduino and APC220 Robot

That project is a robot harnessing several technological methods.

Basically, this robot is controlled by a wireless module(APC220), either manual or autonomous by a transmitter.
As well as it got an on-board mounted USB-WebCam that transmits live footage and got streamed on a laptop screen by a Raspberry Pi running as a webcam server.

Here are some images of the robot(excuse the focus of the camera!)

                                The side UltraSonic sensor is used as a part of a ‘Get Around Obstacles’ algorithm.                                   That swagger pose…regardless of the junky chassis!

this front view is ridicules! this robot looks way too serious! with head on top and Sharp™ eyes on the lower deck!

Those Sharp IR sensors produce too much noise on the data line, therefore, some capacitors should be added. Moreover, there is a Micro servo rotates the sensors left/right to get an idea of the surroundings while on autonomous mode.

Raspberry pi, being ran as a webcam server for the moment, but a lot of plans on the way to harness its capabilities later on(since it’s a credit sized computer!)

Arduino UNO board, which is the (current)brains behind this robot.

this is the motor driver board; underneath this orange heatsink(that i got from an old PC) are 2 L293D ICs that control the 4 motors directions.

close-up on the upper deck, that’s how the camera’s mounted, on top of a servo with a custom made holder.
When shit hits the fan, this orange indicator light should burns up!!

this is not some messy wirings, this is ThunderWiring!!!!
The blue thing is the battery(12v dc 1800mah) and the orange board is the wireless receiver(APC220) with the antenna attached to it
Those ICs, are shift registers! they’re cool too!

some parts on the robot require different voltage, so that the 12v battery doesn’t fry them, i used voltage regulators, that divide the voltage of the battery, also it works way better than voltage divider circuits that use 2 resistors(a google search reveals the mystery)

555 timer chip used to blink 2 indicator LEDs. Nothing fancy here.

the raspberry pi set-up: on the 2 USB ports; one for the wifi dongle and the second for the webcam. Also it got an 8G SD card and a power supply input. No connection whatsoever is between the laptop and the raspberry pi!!

the SD card and micro USB power supply connected

the transmitter that used to control the robot wirelessly, it has the same APC220 module as on the robot but figured as a transmitter this time. Also here, the Arduino UNO runs the show, as it reads data from the joysticks and transmits some bytes accordingly. The LCD should display information regarding the robot performance, however i got it fried 😦

some indicator LEDs. 2 potentiometers for the LCD brightness/contrast and the other for the camera tilting control. Toggle switches to flip between the different controlling modes.

Thanks for reading that far and going through the story of my 2013 summer time. It was a joy to work on something and to get it working eventually..regardless of all the bugs and errors and ‘turn downs’ through the way, that where lessons are, after all!

sorry i cannot capture a video of it running…but for now, i am storing it in a box for 3-4 years until i got more academic knowledge that should hopefully upgrade its intelligence….

The show is over, folks.

~ to be continued….