Project info for Linefollower1

Created 29 Sep 2004 at 19:39 UTC by ericzayers.

Homepage: http://www.ayershome.org/~eric/robots/linefollower1/

Notes:

This is my first "from scratch" robotics project. It is currently incomplete.

The original idea for this robot was to create a "thomas the tank engine" sized robot that could pull my son's trains by following a hand drawn line.

I learned a lot from this project and intend to finish it.

Materials:

Run of the mill Infrared Emitter and Detector diodes from Austin Electonics (Local electronics store in Duluth, GA.)
Microchip PIC 16F876A microcontroller (28 pin)
ULN2801 Darlington Array
tinybl serial bootloader
Surplus Epson Unipolar stepper motors from All Electronics

As of September 2004, the circuitry is complete. The robot can detect a line and control its motors. To finish the project, all I need to do is make a little chassis, drive train, and attach the wheels.

The project is halted on several grounds.

I got interested in hacking Billy Bass
The motors are way Way WAY too weak. I built 2 experimental drivetrains to try to compensate for this. There is a quicktime movie on my website of it moving. Be sure to watch it, because whenever I try to demo it live, it rarely works.

Description: A small linefollowing robot built from scratch

This project has the following developers: