Seed Planter

This seed planter was created to drive and drop seeds at a given distance or time. The planter will drive straight until its sensor finds an object, then it will move right or left a given distance and make a 180° rotation and carry on. The Arduino board is located on top of the vehicle next to the seed dispenser.

1. Materials for Arduino

• 1 breadboard

• 1 Arduino board

• 2 gear motors

• 1 ultrasonic motion sensor

• 1 motor driver

• 4 wheels

• Wires

1. Building Materials

• Cardboard sheets

• 1 roll of tape

• 4 bottle caps

• 1 pair of scissors or 1 X-Acto knife

• 1 bag of seeds

• 1 thin plastic tube + 1 bottle (any size)

• 8 strips of Velcro

In Tinkercad, we built the basic circuit for the planter car. The design includes the Arduino, motor driver, two DC gear motors, ultrasonic sensor, and external power connections. This step shows how each component should be wired before moving to the physical build.

Tinkercad Link: Circuit design Glorious Uusam - Tinkercad

This step involves building the Arduino board that will run your vehicle and seed dispenser. The tinkercad file is a good resource to follow when building the Arduino along with the pictures displayed above.

Wiring Vid.MOV

The seed-dropper works by using gravity and a small servo motor to release one seed at a time. The clear tube holds the seeds, and they naturally fall to the bottom. The end of the tube feeds into the round base, where a servo is mounted inside. The servo rotates a small piece with a hole in it that lines up under the tube. When it turns, one seed falls into the hole, and as it rotates again, that seed is pushed out onto the ground. The Arduino controls when the servo rotates, so the car can drop seeds at steady intervals while moving.

Wiring

1. The wiring of the Arduino board is more in depth in the previous steps

Wheels

1. This part requires two Arduino wheels, duct tape, Velcro, cardboard, 2 bottle caps, and a pencil.
2. First, attach both Arduino wheels to the gearmotors and secure the gearmotors to the Arduino with duct tape.
3. Second, attach two bottle caps together with duct tape and poke a smooth hole through the middle of both caps. Insert a pencil through both caps.
4. Lastly, construct a 3D half trapezoidal shape. This is what the bottle cap wheel will sit in. Poke a hole on each side of the trapezoid and insert the pencil through each side. This will secure the wheel to the trapezoid. Then duct tape or Velcro the 3D trapezoid to the bottom of the breadboard, with the slanted part of the trapezoid closest to the Arduino wheels.

Dispenser

1. This part requires a servo motor, duct tape, skewers, plastic tube, and a bottle cap.
2. First attach a skewer to each side of the Arduino and breadboard and fasten them with duct tape. Then connect the ends of the skewer sticking out with two more skewers using duct tape. This will hold the dispenser in place.
3. Secondly, put two holes in the bottle cap with the flat part facing up. Attach the servo into the hole in the middle with duct tape. Place this configuration between the skewers using duct tape.
4. Lastly, connect the plastic tube to the servo and the skewers using duct tape. The tube should be placed above the dispensing hole so that the servo can rotate the cap and drop the seeds.