The Glowing Green Robot

Robots look cooler when they have a sinister green glow. Better yet, when that glow exists for a functional purpose it's even better!

Here I show how to make a custom robot and use LED's to not only enhance line following, but also make it work in the dark too.

Enjoy the video!

First you need to design your robot.

I designed mine using CAD, planning out the locations of all the parts carefully. This is the most important step to making a robot!

The wheels are servo driven, the material is made out of HDPE and bronze metal sheets, the back wheels are foam, and in the front is an orange caster wheel.

I hand made each of the components using a manual mill.

Follow the images in order for construction steps.

In this step, I used two 4000 candela green LEDs in series with weak resistors.

Next to the LEDs I added photoresistors to be used as a color sensor. See the second image for a close-up.

When the green light reflects back at the sensor, more light reflects back from the white line than the background. By using a simple voltage threshold, the sensor picks up more light when its on the line. Therefore it can follow it!

I could have also used infrared LEDs . . . but you can't see it so where's the fun?!

The sensor schematic is the third image.

I used the Cerebellum 16F877 PIC microcontroller (no longer sold).

You can download my sourcecode here

I mounted the microcontroller using hex spacers and screws. I also added a bit of amusing decoration . . .

It's turned on so thats why its glowing green!

That concludes my instructable, hope you give me a good rating! =)

side note:
If you want more details, including a rotatable CAD file, feel free to check out the full documentation