.jpg)
My Pi Adventures
I've managed to get my pi to dance.
...
My Pi
I've started a project with my Raspberry Pi. The ultimate plan is to build a Virtual Presence device. The idea started as just some vague notion of mounting a security camera onto a robot. I had to develop the plan as I went. By the way, this isn't meant to be a step by step tutorial, just a narrative of my experience as a person with little electronics knowledge. I knew that I wanted to use my Pi as the control mechanism.
I though I'd start with flashing some LEDs, but lets back-track a little. On my Pi I already had Apache and PHP set up, so my Pi could serve web pages and run server side scripting. This was going to be my method of control. I've got this working, and will post some details at a later time. The next phase is to control some motors.
While surfing the web, I came across a robot chasis from Hobby King. It looked the part, so I ordered one online. On arrival, I was keen to open up the package and have a quick look, especially as the carton had been crushed. Inside though the contents were well protected with air cells.
I was only learning and designing this project as I went, so roughly assembling the chasis served two purposes. 1. made sure all the parts were there, and fitted together properly (no issues there), and 2. gave me something to start to plan around.
OK, so now I had a chasis with motors and wheels, but how do I power them up controlled by my Pi? My first thought was some sort of DAC device, but that was wrong. A quick web search found a half bridge motor driver chip was the way to go. Rather than experiment with the real motors, I remembered I had an old motor in my bits box. I bought a chip (...) from Jaycar, and breadboarded a motor driver circuit. I had a lot of trouble with this. I ended up ordering a different chip (SN754410) online, and for a while had some trouble with that as well. Two main issues: bad connections, and not connected, is not the same as ground. Eventually got a working circuit. Really didn't seem to need all the capacitors that various sources were recommending.
...
. . .