Race Car

This project is a RC car modified to can be controled by an microcontroller to can be drived by itself.

The scope of this project make the care able to run in a circuit bounded by reflective lines.

Step 1: Materials

1: An old RC car.

2: Servo Motor.

3: DC motor.

3: Servo driver.

4: H-bridge to control the DC motor.

5: 4 x Line sensors

6: 12V battery for the motor (I use 9V + 2 * 1,5V).

7: 6V battery for the servo (I use 4 * 1,5V).

8. 5V battery for the arduino (I use a portable battery).

9. Microcontroller (I use Arduino Uno)

10. Some plastic gears to make the conections between the motors and the car's gear system.

11. Glue.

Step 2: Construction

First of all you have to find a way to change the car's motors with your to be controled easier.

The back motor of the car can be used with the a H-bridge. I didn't use it because with the weight of the car with all the components, the motor didn't work. So I use a bigger one with a gearbox.

I use a servo to control better the direction of the wheels.

Step 3: Wiring

We conecte the batteries to a switch and after to the components like this:

1: 12V battery -> H-bridge

2: 6V battery -> Servo

3: 5V battery -> arduino and to all the components that need the same Vcc Voltage to run (all the drivers)

4: Conecting all the signals cables to the microcontroller following the datasheet of the driver. From the h-bridge I use the enable and dir pins, from the servo the signal pin and from the sensor the output pins.

Step 4: Software

For this project I use Arduino IDE with CPP code.

Step 5: Code

Make functions that controls every driver separatly with one or more parameters.

Write functions that reads the sensors input.

1: setServo(Angle);

2: setMotor(Dir, Speed);

3: readSensors();

Until now I can control this functions with a joystick. The next step is to implement the algorithm that will make autonomous.