$18 Robot - Fully Running in 2hours

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

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)

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.

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.

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:

• download Arduino IDE here download
• download the source code from this page schneller_blitz.ino
• start Arduino IDE and open the source code
• compile
• upload
• run!

Now its your turn to modify the code and have fun with that tiny guy.

Some additional pictures from the robot are attached.

• If you have questions - let me know.
• If you have more ideas on what to do with it - let me know.
• If you did build it - well send me pictures and lets share ideas!

Thats all guys.

Thanks for reading!

Best