Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dave Glidden on January 4, 2010 at 7:49pm

Hey Dustin,
I can't help you regarding the boards, I just wanted to voice my excitement over your project! I've just purchased a Red Cat Rockslide (looks like you have one too) that I want to use in my home inspection business. My plan is to mount a pan/tilt Blackfin camera and lights and use that setup for an initial survey of crawl space items (plumbing, foundation, structure etc).


Please keep us updated with your progress.

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Romero on January 4, 2010 at 9:13pm

Which crawler did you get? the 1/8th scale super class is almost impossible to find a challenge for it to climb. but this comes at a size cost, seeing as this thing is 26" long and 13" tall.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Glidden on January 5, 2010 at 9:28am

I ordered the 1/8th scale. Some crawl spaces can be quite challenging, and judging from the videos I've seen, this truck should have no problems. As long as I keep the pan/tilt camera relatively low, clearance (hopefully) won't be an issue.

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Permalink Reply by JD Warren on January 9, 2010 at 8:19am

I am about to try a similar project. I just finished an R/C lawnmower using the Arduino to read 2 servo signals from my r/c receiver and output commands to the h-bridge. It works very well for r/c control, but I just got an Ardupilot with GPS module and am about to try to integrate it onto my lawnmower. Having trouble finding in the code where I can change the outputs to control my motors.

If you want to use your Arduino, I can give you some code to decode 2 servo signals from your R/C receiver and turn them into PWM values (plus a 3rd aux channel for on/off). If you are getting an Arduino Mega, you can decode 6 or more because it has 6 external interrupts (the regular arduino only has 2). You would need an h-bridge to control the motor though (pretty easy to make).

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Romero on January 9, 2010 at 2:43pm

i already have an esc that takes pwm signals

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Romero on January 11, 2010 at 4:53pm

i want to use the ardupilot to get the directioning and use the mega to do obsticle avoidance, what i want to do is have the ardupilot give direction directly to the servo and esc and then when the mega detects something, it disconnects the ardupilot and implements a set of movements to go around
any help you can give would be great

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Permalink Reply by Joel Ryan on January 18, 2010 at 12:12pm

ouch sorry to hear about the fried stamp... you should make sure to protect your arduino mega with a zener diode or two... cheap investment that can save your board in voltage spikes

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Romero on January 18, 2010 at 4:08pm

well the mega runs its own power conditioner, so i shouldn't have any problems should i?

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