Picture Pages (back to main page)
There were two phases to the hardware design. The first was to test all of the components individually to see if I could get them to work. Here are some old pictures of some of the original testing of hardware components.
One of the first things I had to do is find an R/C Car chassis that I could use for the robot. I took apart the radio shack bedlam to see how much room I could use in it. I decides to use the chassis, stripping out most of everything except the rear motors and gears. This left a lot of room for electronics
The first electronics I designed was involved in getting two motors to go at whatever speed I wanted to get them on, and then monitor there speed with shaft encoders. This was my first attempt at this. For this I had some simple diagnostic software and my first PCB for this project, which had the electronics for both the shaftencoders and the H-Bridge. What a mess! As you might guess all of the hardware was eventually redesigned, however some of the software was moved on to the next level.
