That was fun!

I recently came across a small kit of robot parts that got my attention because it was that cheap. According to the kit all parts (wheels, body, cable, CONTROLLER!, ... ) are included.

To be honest I was pessimistic and thought this might be a catch. BUT: stay cool and see what happened

2019-08-18_21-06-18_IMG_3377.MOV
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Supplies

you may need following tools (which usually are present in well sorted DIY household :) )

philips screw driver
soldering iron

and the parts

robot kit can be bought here (other places have them too, but I didnt find it somewhere cheaper)

Step 1: Step 1: Assembly

I had to look a couple of times to the original pictures of the kit. So in case you want to give it a try - I took some pictures for reference.

The assembly steps are

attaching the free rotating wheel
fix the two motors with the clamping parts (see pictures)
clip the two wheels to the motor shaft
use the hex-bolts with the screws and fix them to the base plate (yes, you may smile - even the bolts were included)
finally attach controller and motor driver to the hex bolts

Thats it. Next step is wiring.

Step 2: Step 2: Wiring

Don't panic - wiring is less a headache than it looks. Please find an overview here:

Motor Cables (each 2pins)

each motor gets 1 wire - see picture
any pinning is ok - you will later figure out by rotation direction of the wheel if you need to swap wires

Power Cables (each 2pins)

2pcs of power cables need
the battery box supplies power and comes with red (+) and black (-) cable
red is (+)
black is (-)
red (+) should go to the motor driver pin +12V (the red board) - see picture
black (-) should go to the motor driver pin GND (the red board) - see picture
from there you can directly use the bullet connector and supply the arduino controller with it -- or solder directly to the connect, as I did
Note: there is 1 addition pin next to +12V, GND - its called +5V, please leave this pin open - see picture

Motor Driver Cable (4pins)

1pcs of cable (brown, red, orange, yellow)
this cable starts at the motor driver - see picture
the other side of that cable goes to the controller to pins 2, pin 3, pin 4 and pin 5 - see picture
this cable controls direction and speed of the motor

Distance Sensore Cable (3pins)

1pcs of cable (orange, red, brown)
this cable starts at the sensor (its hard wired)
the other end of this cable goes to controler pin 10 - see picture

Thats it! Next step: programming.

Step 3: Step 3: Programming

Well that is the last part and actually the last step before the beast is grabbing the road.

For those who never used Arduino before - lets have a really brief intro:

Arduino is a programming IDE for Arduino Controllers (like the blue board)
Arduino IDE can be downloaded free of charge ! however its preferred to donate if you can spare a dollar
You can modify the behaviour of the robot by programming and loading the modified program to the arduino board
We connect the blue board via USB to the computer (I prefer a usb hub in between computer and arduino board)
Load the programm and done
If you need support using Arduino IDE let me know

For the ones that need a kickstart: