In between aircraft I built this rover. It is a Traxxas Slash frame with a piece of 1/8" aircraft plywood on top for an electronics platform. The plywood measures 16.5" x 6.5". It was super easy to build. In the next few days I will finish configuring the electronics, update and confirgure the software and test it out. If anybody has any related tips or experiences they would like to share I would be happy to hear them. I will post updates when I have it running.
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@Steven Boyd, I switched my APM1 to the new 2650 board and added the magnetometer so now I am planning to test out my rover this weekend. I will use the code by Jean-Louis Naudin, have you seen it? If you click on "ArduRover" at the top of the main page it will take you to the thread he started. He is good and incredibly fast. What code are you using?
I am also thinking about an extendible camera arm. I have a Homeseer home control system and on occasion get an alarm message from it while not at home. It would be nice to have an internet accessible, indoor capable, long armed rover, to check things out.
Of course right now it is too much fun bashing around outside.
weather has been crap and transit of Venus now has priority but, I've got the APM1 in and connected. I'm using 2 RC systems. One for the pan/tilt camera system and one for the crawler itself.The one for the camera may also be used for an extendable arm with the camera mounted on it. As the one for the crawler will only have the steering being used by the apm1, I'm looking at what else can be incorperated and controlled. The possibilities are endless and scarey heh heh.
ok, got off track there for a while. I finally got the APM2 and it's awesome. Bench tested on the work bench (aka kitchen table) and it's very nice. Way smaller than the previous version and after I worked out the problem with the cable, Everything is sweet. The cable was #%$&&^*@ :) so after 3 hours trying everything I could think of, replaced it with another I had. Lappy would not recognise it when plugged in. It happens I suppose. I assumed the cable was the only bit working..... oops.
I'm nearly finished setting up the crawler with the APM1 and Fat Shark goggles. Couple of days and it'll be ready to test run. Weather permitting....
With it's top speed of a good walking pace, I think it would have to be a serious situation to put it to the roll over point. With sooo much weight down low at the wheel level, I found it has a very low center of gravity. I've had it happily trundling along a 45 degree embankment without any sign of roll over. I even turned up the gradient and no problems. I'll do a test as to the angle of roll with it on a board or something and report back. I like this rock crawler as it has a hell of a twist ability in the chassis and the motors have worm gears so if you stop the motors, they lock and don't slowly turn as it rolls down the hill. Great if you need to stop on a slope and pan/tilt your camera.
Would you get more accurate rollover detection on something like a crawler w/ accelerometers on each axle as well? How much information is too much, or not useful, in situations like this?
@robert that should be easier, thermopile or even ldr on the bottom of rover should do ..
@Stephen, I think you should look into employing the accelerometer as a tip-over prevention/detection system. ;)
This blog is looking sweet! I'm loving the rovers!Like the idea of driving around the home to see if windows open or iron is left on!
here's the APM1 and assorted bits mounted in the Bixler cockpit unit ready for adding to the rockcrawler. As you can see, there's plenty of room on top behind the camera to add it.
I'll be doing a video of the beast going through it's paces later this week. Only through RC not APM.
You'll notice I didn't bother with the airspeed pitot as I don't think it moves fast enough to even register heh heh
clear skies
looks cool, post some video as well, looks like ardurover is taking up steam, hope there is enough CS373 fans in here to take ardurover to the next level, add an extra board ( possibly ARM) to run the code...
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