An Instructable Robot With Many Features

Hi friends, in this instructable I am going to introduce a fantastic robot that can do the following tasks:

1- It can move and the control of its movements is done by Bluetooth

2- It can do cleaning as a vacuum cleaner

3- It can play songs by Bluetooth

4- It can change the states of its eyes and mouth by Arduino

5- It has flashing LED

6- Its eyebrow and its skirt 's margin is made of strip LED

So this unique instructable is a very good class for those who want a simple but multi functioned robot.

I must add, many features of this robot is taken from articles in Instructables site and I am acknowledging this by quoting the article in every relevant section.

1- General Dimensions of the robot :

-The dimensions of base : 50 * 50 cm , height from the ground 20 cm including wheels

- The dimension of wheels : Front wheels diameters : 5 cm, Rear wheels 12 cm

- The dimensions of vacuum cleaner tank : 20 *20 * 15 cm

- The pipes diameters: 35 mm

- The battery compartment dimensions: 20 * 20 * 15 cm

- The Istructables robot dimensions: 45 * 65 * 20 cm

Features:

- movement by two motors rotating the rear wheels and two front wheels without power, the rotation of motors is controlled by a unit which is controlled by Bluetooth and a software which can be installed in smart phone.

- Vacuum cleaning function with a switch

- Flashing LED strips with red and blue colors

- Changing the states of eyes and mouth every 10 seconds

- Eyebrows and the margin of skirt of robot red LED with constant light could be switched on-off

-Bluetooth speakers switched on-off on robot body and could be operated by android smart phone through Bluetooth.

Materials, modules and components used in this robot are as follows:

1- Two Motor-Gearbox ZGA28 (Fig. 1):

Model - ZGA28RO (RPM) 50, Manufacturer : ZHENG, Shaft diameter : 4 mm , Voltage: 12 V, shaft length 11.80 mm, No load current : 0.45 A, gearbox diameter : 27.90 mm, max. torque: 1.7 kg.cm, gearbox height : 62.5 mm, constant torque: 1.7 kg.cm, length : 83 mm, speed ratio : 174, Diameter : 27.67 mm

2- One Bluetooth Driver for robot motors(Fig. 2):

BlueCar v1.00 equipped with HC-O5 Bluetooth module(Fig 3)

An android software called BlueCar v1.00 can be installed in Android smart phones and simply control the movements of the motors.

The Android software is showed in Figs(4-1,4-2, 4-3, 4-4, 4-5) and can be downloaded

3- One 12 V, 4.5 A-h lead-acid battery (Fig.5)

4- Two motor brackets 28 * 23 * 32 mm (Fig. 6, Fig 7)

5- Two motor couplings 10*10*(4-6) mm (Fig. 8)

6- Two motor shafts 6 mm diameter * 100 mm length

7- Two drive rear wheels each 12 cm diameter(Fig 9)

8- Two front wheels each 5 cm diameter (Fig. 10)

9- A 50 cm * 50 cm, square piece of PC (Poly Carbonate ) sheet with 6 mm thickness

10- Electrical duct made of PVC is used for reinforcing and framing the base the dimensions are 3*3 cm

11- PVC pipe with 35 mm diameter for vacuum cleaner pipes (including elbow)

12- Vacuum cleaner tank or container is plastic container I had in my scraps with the dimension of 20* 20* 15 cm

13 - Vacuum cleaner motor-fan, 12 V motor with a centrifugal fan direct coupled to it

14- Six rocker switches

15- One Arduino Uno module

16- One amplifier module green PAM8403

https://www.win-source.net/en/search?q=PAM8403

17- Two speakers, each 8 Ohm, 3 W

18- Five 8*8 dot matrix modules with Max7219 chip and SPI connector(Fig. 12)

https://www.win-source.net/en/search?q=Max7219

19- Two power transistors 7805

20- two diodes 1N4004

https://www.win-source.net/en/search?q=1N4004

21- Two capacitors 3.3 uF

22- Two capacitors 100 uF

23- Two transistors BC547

https://www.win-source.net/en/search?q=BC547

24- Two resistors 100Ohm

25- Two resistors 100 kOhm

26- Two capacitors 10 uF

27- Three project boards 6*4 cm

28- Enough breadboard wires and single core 1 mm wires

29- One female USB connector(I used a burned USB hub and take one of its female USB out!)

30- One Bluetooth receiver BT163

31- Electrical duct made of PVC 1*1 cm

32- Screws

33- Eight On board terminals

1- Cutter

2- Hand saw

3- Soldering Iron

4- Pliers

5- Wire cutter

6- Small drill with different heads(drill bits - grinders, cutters )

7- Ruler

8- Solder

9- super glue

10- small and medium size screw drivers

In order to size the driving motors I used a drive sizing tool at the following site:

http://www.robotshop.com/blog/en/drive-motor-sizin...

The basics are as follows:

he Drive Motor Sizing Tool is intended to give an idea of the type of drive motor required for your specific robot by taking known values and calculating values required when searching for a motor. DC motors are generally used for continuous rotation drive systems, though can be used for partial (angle to angle) rotation as well. They come in an almost infinite variety of speeds and torques to suite any need. Without a geardown, DC motors turn very fast (thousands of revolutions per minute (rpm)), but have little torque. To get feedback of the angle or the speed of the motor, consider a motor with an encoder option.
Gear motors are essentially DC motors with an added geardown. Adding a geardown both reduces the speed and increases the torque. For example, an unloaded DC motor might spin at 12000 rpm and provide 0.1 kg-cm of torque. A 225:1 geardown is added to proportionally reduce the speed and increase the torque: 12000 rpm / 225 = 53.3 rpm and 0.1 x 225 = 22.5 kg-cm. The motor will now be able to move significantly more weight at a more reasonable speed. If you are not certain about what value to enter, try to make a good “educated” guess. Click each link for more explanation about the effect of each input value. You are also encouraged to look at the Drive Motor Sizing Tutorial, where you will find all the equations used in this tool complete with explanations.

Therefore my inputs to the tools are shown in Fig. 1

And the out puts are shown in Fig.2

The reasons of my selection inputs was, firstly availability and secondly price, so I had to adapt my design to what was available and so I had to do many compromises including inclination angle, speed and RPM., so despite the value of 80 RPM that the tool proposed, I selected a motor with 50 RPM.

You can find many sites in the Internet which are allocated to drive motor selection in the following site there is a very good guide in pdf format that gives invaluable tips regarding the selecting mobile robot motors:

http://www.servomagazine.com/uploads/issue_downloa...

Making the mechanical parts can be done in steps as follows:

1- Making the base: cutting a 50*50 cm of a sheet made of PC(poly-carbonate) with 6 mm thickness and using 3*3 electrical ducts to reinforce it both as a rectangle and two cross bracing for a better strength.

2- Attaching two vertical parts from electrical ducts to the base and making it strong enough for driving wheels, making a compartment for driving motors and fixing all these to the base with screws to make a rigid structure for load bearing and wheel supporting.

3- Connecting wires long enough to motors and soldering them and connecting motors by brackets to the motor compartment.

4- connecting wheels to shafts by screws and gluing to make these assemblies strong enough which withstand the load and speed, and after inserting the shafts in to holes provided in vertical parts(see clause 2) and adding two plastic washers at both sides to make a bearing for shaft rotation, connect the shafts to motor couplings and use setscrews to make a strong connection, otherwise the shafts can disengaged from the motors and make life difficult for you. The aligning the motors is important and needs careful and accurate task and enough patience to make the drive sturdy and freely moving.

5- Connecting the front wheels (in my case a kind of rollers used in moving chairs) to the small base and screwing their base to vertical 35 mm PVC pipes, in order to make them freely rotating without any impediment and grabbing, it is better to use a little silicone oil for all wheels bearing holes and on the rolling wheels to make them running freely with speed.

6- Connecting battery compartment which is made from poly-carbonate sheets and screwing the compartment to the base and putting battery inside the compartment ready for later connections.

7- Connecting the vacuum cleaner tank to the base by glue and screws and attaching the pipes to it, I have used an elbow and I made a tee by pipes, which were cut appropriately to be used as vacuum cleaning suction inlet. Also connecting the motor-fan assembly for vacuum cleaning (the motor terminals should be connected to wires long enough for later works also the wires would be at least 0.5 mm^2 for high current draw by the vacuum cleaner motor) to the top of the tank.

8- In this step the instructables robot would be cut from poly-carbonate sheet(6 mm thickness) and connected to the base such that the vacuum cleaner tank locates inside it and the head of the robot which 20*20*20 cube is allocated to electronics components and the modules. three holes for rocker switches should be made in robot front body.

To make the electronic parts the steps are as follows:

1- Making flashing LED

The circuit and components of this part is taken exactly from my previous instructable as follows:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Amplifier-With-Bl...

2- Making the matrix dot LED for the state of eyes and mouth:

All of what of I have done in this step was taken from the following instructable:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Controlling-a-LED...

except I have changed it's software and instead of controlling it through the serial monitor, I have added some codes to change the states of eyes and mouth every 10 seconds. In software section I will explain more about this and include the software for download. I have included a small circuit for converting 12 V battery Voltage to 5 Volts for Arduino UNO input connection, the detail of such circuit is in my previous instructable as follows:

https://www.instructables.com/id/A-DESK-TOP-EVAPOR...

3- Making the Bluetooth driving motors

The connections of motors to the Bluetooth driving motor module (Fig.3) is easy and according to the above said figure, i.e. the right motor terminals to the right terminals of the driver and the the left motor terminals to the left terminals of the driver, and the power from battery to the power and ground terminals of the driver in which a rocker switch is installed on the battery compartment for on-off . The software of this part will be explained in software part.

4- Making the Bluetooth speakers

This part is easy and is taken exactly from the following instructable:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Convert-Speakers-...

With two exceptions, firstly I have not torn up the Bluetooth receiver and I have used a female USB to connect it to my power supply (the same as item 2 above, i.e. 12 V/ 5 V circuit) and a female jack to connect it to my amplifier module. Secondly I have used amplifier module, green PAM8403 ( https://www.win-source.net/en/search?q=PAM8403), 3 W (Fig 11), instead of the amplifier used in that instructable, and I connected my left speaker to the left terminals of the PAM8403 and connect the right speaker to the right terminals of PAM8403( https://www.win-source.net/en/search?q=PAM8403 ), taking polarity in to consideration, I have used 5V input from the same power supply above and I have connected the three terminals of the PAM8403 to the output jack of the Bluetooth receiver according to the figure.

There are Two softwares in this instructable, 1- for Bluetooth motor driver and 2) for Dot-matrix eyes and mouth

- The software for the motor driver is included here for download, you can install this apk in your smart phone and control the robot by software through Bluetooth.

- The software for the Arduino is the same as the software included in the above said instructable for changing the state of eyes and mouth by using Dot-Matrix LED-s, but I have changed some of the codes to cause Arduino change the states in every 10 seconds, and this software is included here for download too.

At last but not least, I hope you can make your own robot and enjoy it like me when I see my instructables robot every day doing fantastic jobs and it reminds me that I am part of a creative community called INSTRUCTABLES