Smart WIFI Video Car( Arduino Control )

All of us have a exploration desire of unknown place. When I and my partner watching the movie "The Martian" and see that there is a robot car in Mars—— A planet that is Fifty-six million kilometers away from our earth. “He” work at Mars with our protagonist and pass back the image into earth of there. What a cool “boy”！we couldn’t suppress our desire to DIY a smart robot car. But we are just a couple of indoors man, we don’t have money and high-technology. Never mind! We were maker and we can make imagination to reality. Okay, please think about what common technology now we can use to control our car? It called “WIFI”, you must be familiar to it，with the rising of WIFI technology in recent years, there are many electric products utilize it, like mobile phone, watch, Smart Home, even in omnibus. So we decide to DIY a different and special robot car based on Arduino, we give it a name called: “Smart WIFI Video Car”.

The function of this robot car is easy to understand by its name. YES! You can control it to obtain images of the surrounding environment by the camera, and synchronous upload video to your Android client. At the same time, you can control it with your android app. Convenient and simply. we add a pan-tilt for controlling the camera to providing more wider view range of the car. It move fast and react quickly. You can adjust the direction of car according to the video. So if you want to “explore” some place narrow and may damage to your health, you can remote control your car as movie shown. Of course it not only for playing but also studying.

Try to get your imagination start and make it more smarter. And we will try our best to improve it. Let’s work together!

Have a look! What a cute and shy boy!

Module Preparing: OK! Let’s begin. You should prepare these before assembling, both of them are cheap and easy to buy.

1. Crowduino UNO X1 - A 100% Arduino compatible board

2. Crowtial- Motor base shieldX1 - A motor driver shield to control the motor and connect to other sensors

3. Crowtail- WIFI module X1 - Transfering the video stream and control commands

4. USB camera X1(Capture video). - Used to capture the video

5. 4WD Utility CarX1 - The best platform for mobile application.

6. Pan-Tilt X1 - Control the movement of the camera

7. Battery and battery holder.

1: LEGS(motor)

It has four ”legs”, you should welding wires on them to make sure it can run up. then you need to fasten them to chassis by using motor bracket as above pictures show.

2: BODY(acrylic chassis)

Install four copper cylinder brackets on the down- chassis for fasten up- chassis,and three copper cylinder brackets on the up-chassis for Crowduino. you can choose each piece of chassis as down-chassis and left one for up-chassis.

3:FEET(wheel)

At last. let’s install the wheels. A basic 4WD Mobile platform has been completed.

After assembling the car, we need to start the electronic parts---the brain. The first role is the Crowdunio UNO, fasten it on the three copper cylinder. the next one is Crowtial - Motor base shield. Plug it onto the Crowduino UNO. Then we should link the motor to the “brain”, there has something important enough to pay attention to it. Like human’s nerve, you also couldn’t make fault at this step. Or you will destroy the brain. Please observe the above sketch picture carefully.

We need two batteries and a battery holder.

Fix the holder on the up-chassis. and The red cable connect to the VIN of Crowtial- Motor base shield, the black cable connect to the GND of Crowtial- Motor base shield(DO NOT MIX UP). Unfortunately we make the mistake due to our careless. So we lost a Crowtial- Motor base shield. Forget this unhappy experience and let’s go on…

Now it's time to power it and make a test to insure that can run up rather than going round. It’s ashamed if we make a “smart car” into “stupid car”. Connect the Crowduino UNO with USB cable to PC and Upload the test code into it. if you see that the wheel can’t run in the same direction after powering your car , please exchange the two wire of the motor. For example: if the Motor 1 go forward, but the Motor 2 go back, Now we just change the cable of motor 2, the red cable to OUT2,the black cable to OUT1, then test again.

Now search an eye for him is emergency. This eye require to be turn to multi-directions. So we combine the pan-tilt with the webcam.Genious! Let's work!

1:Install the Pan-Tilt.

The Pan-Tilt have four holes in the chassis, fix the Pan-Tilt on it with screw.

2: Plug the camera onto the Pan-Tilt.

3: Bind the WIFI module.

4.Connect the WIFI module to the UART port of Crowtial- Motor base shield.

5.Connect the Pan-Tilt to the Crowtial- Motor base shield, up-servo link to D7 and down-servo link to D6.

6.Connect the camera to the WIFI module with a USB cable.

Finally, we can clean up the cable, and make it looks more comfortable! Okay! A WIFI VIDEO REBOT CAR has been completed.

At last we’ll show you how to make it work；

1: Upload the code(when upload the code, please CUT OFF the connection of WIFI module and Crowduino.)

2: Download the APP from attached files at the end of essay

3: Install the APP into your Phone (the APP just for android system)

4: Power the WIFI Video Car, it will work and you need to wait for a moment, then open your phone Wifi switch to search for the WIFI signal called ”Elecrow”. Connect to it without password input.

Ok! sit down and have a relax. Oh yeah, Let's take a look at what others doing now, uh-huh!

You must want to do some interesting experiment by using it. so we 'll demonstrate two kinds of application for you. one called Ultrasonic Obstacle-Avoiding Robot Car and left one called Tracking Car.you need to prepare the Crowtail- Ultrasonic Ranging Sensor module and pieces of Crowtail-IR Reflective Sensor. The black tape in the picture is use for making a black track, This track round in a circle for testing the tracking car.

if you want to use some expand function like ultrasonic obstacle-avoiding, you can choose the Crowtail- Ultrasonic Ranging Sensor, simple to assembe and start to work easily. First you need to remove the webcam then tighten the Crowtail module to pan -tilt. At last you need to link to the Crowtail- motor base shield(USE THE D2/D3 PORT),and the up-servo is not necessary.plug it or not don't have influence. Ok! Download the code and upload to the "BRAIN". Power the car and let it run to have a test.

And the other common application is TRACKING CAR. in our experiment ,three pieces of Crowtail-IR Reflective Sensors are in need. First of all, in order to make it looks more comportable,we should to remove the pan - tilt. Then we can install the acrylic pillar to the down- chassis. Now we'll fix three Crowtail-IR Reflective Sensors on down- chassis. It time to make it become a F1 racing car. Download the code and upload it to your Crowduino. Power your car you'll see it run fast along the track. Well done!

Both of us want our baby to study more and become more outstanding. So we try to make our smart wifi video car more smarter. but my partner and me don't have enough nice ideas and our knowledge and skills also can't support more powerful function development work. so may be you can become "his" new good teacher and teach him more skills. Please contact us soon. Our email address is " kevin@elecrow.com".

Code and android app also be provided in below upload files.