Finished suspension drawing

 I have the whole week off from work and school! Know what that means? Yup, plenty of time to work on Inspiration! So I've spent the past couple of days drawing all the suspension parts and making them work together so that I can hopefully print them soon. 

 After a lot of thought and drawing, I decided to go with a design modeled after Don Bickler's rocker-bogie system that was used on Sojourner. This way, I use less bearings, only need 1 hole per side for wires to  run through, and if attached in the correct spots, the body of the rover will self level by hanging from the "shoulder" joints. Here's a picture of what I drew on Inventor:  

 All the suspension parts are interchangeable with the other side's parts so I can simply print 2 of every part and I won't need to worry about which side of the rover it goes on. The grey shafts are going to be 7/16 styrene tubing that can be cut to whatever length I need them, for better customization if I feel I need it and also to run the motor wires inside of for better "housekeeping". The "shoulder" joints are designed to fit a coil spring inside so during launch, the body can be as low as possible and after landing, it will be able to spring to its designed ride height. 

 The sampling arm is my next step in this drawing. It's still roughed out so I can see if it might hit the wheels and also to give everyone an idea of what's going on the front. Hopefully I'll get this drawn up real nice this week.

 Then there's this really quick video to show how the camera arm is going to work. It's way too fast but it's kind of a proof of concept model anyways. 

 I plan to slow this down a whole lot by using one of my extra wheel motors or simply using another coil spring to rotate the arm up. I like the motor idea but it's extra weight that I don't need and I think I'm running out of control outputs on the arduino as well. I'll definitely spend some time on this part soon though.

A Video!

I seem to be having difficulty with Blogger uploading my videos. So I figured out the YouTube way of embedding videos.
Now you get to see more videos like this 'rover's view' video.

 My 8 year old nephew, Will, inspired this video. Just before Thanksgiving, I was showing him how far along the rover is, then he dumped out some Jenga blocks and told me to drive over them. I had never stress tested the motors and wheels before so I totally agreed and found out this thing really has some power! I continued to drive over the blocks for about 10 minutes without any sign of the battery losing power. This quick video I uploaded was a little recreation of that test. Hopefully soon, I'll have suspension on and it'll work even better. Also, you can see the camera displayed on my laptop's screen. In the next few months, I plan on incorporating this into a nice graphical user interface.

Found a name!

 Over the Thanksgiving break, +Cristin Finnigan and I had some time in the car to figure out a name for the rover. We came up with, Inspiration. It seems a fitting name since it is inspired by Sojourner and also, hopefully it will be an inspiration to anybody who wants to make something but has no idea how to do it. Because that's what this entire project is about. Going into this project, the only thing I knew about was gluing the acrylic box together. I started taking classes in electronics, did a whole bunch of internet research, met some people, and now this project is really starting to take shape. I still have more electronics to learn and just about everything yet to learn about rocketry and robotics. Hopefully this project will inspire lots of people to just get out there and do whatever they've been wanting to do, no matter how little they know about it. The internet is free and full of generations of knowledge! Dive in there and find your project!

  On another note. Cristin was REALLY awesome and spent a whole bunch of time coming up with this data sheet that contains a lot of bullet points on the project. Click on the pic to view a larger PDF.

It will be added to as the project progresses. Maybe the back side will have an entire "mission  layout" showing what the launching, landing, and driving sequence will look like. Lots more to come. Probably some videos soon too!

Strong work!

 Yesterday I managed to spend about 12 hours on the rover and made a huge stride in this project! First order of business was permanently attaching the wheels to the motors.

 After weeks of searching local hobby stores for 5/32 tube styrene, I broke down and ordered some from Amazon. I cut these into bushings of sorts, since the inside diameter of the wheels are much bigger than the motor shafts, and I press fit and glued them onto the shafts. Then I glued on the wheels. And yes, I am using the book, Sojourner by Andrew Mishkin, as a quick stand to put the tires on. From what I've read of this book so far, it is definitely inspirational for me and I can't wait to read more! I was recommended this book by friend and author, Jay Gallentine who wrote Ambassadors from Earth. Another book I highly recommend for space history nerds like myself. I also want to extend a huge thanks to Jay for giving me a good push and some fantastic ideas for the future of this project. Hopefully I'll be able to share more on this in the coming months. 

 Next we have wiring. I needed to add some on/off switches, a voltage regulator, and a diode to the total power output. 

 I added a power rail too for better organization. The toggle switches are for the battery and the solar panels. The solar panels are for charging the battery and possibly powering the whole thing but I won't find that out now until the sun comes back up in the summer. I decided it would be nice to isolate the 2 power sources for testing purposes. The voltage regulator was also a tricky one to track down. You'd think a 9v 7809 regulator would be easy to find at radio shack or even in my electronics lab. But no, I had to order that as well. Amazon has been my rover's best friend. The voltage regulator takes the 11.5 volts coming from the solar/battery circuit and holds it at 9 volts to safely power the Arduino and servos. I will still add a small battery sampling circuit so the rover can relay battery life back to me though. That will be coming kind of soon. 

 Once I got everything soldered together, it was time for a quick drive.... outside! My rover's first drive outside!

 Very exciting to see it driving along on pavement instead of carpet. However, it was short lived. When I decided to turn, my temporarily attached motors popped off the temporary place holders. No problem though. Just had to glue them back on and finish cleaning up the wiring. I did manage a quick drive in the kitchen again to test it out more.

Unfortunately I can't seem to upload the video so here's a quick video in the living room.

 Next I focused on a mock up of the camera mount. Here I took 7/16 styrene tubing, cut it at a 45 and attached it to the servo.

 Then added a rotational platform.

 Then I did basically the same thing for the other half, added a rubber band to hold it together and to provide some spring to the rotation, and got these pics:

And this little animation that I whipped up on Inventor..

 I plan to replace the mock-up with a better 3D printed version later. Which reminds me.. I'll have my very own 3D printer from Zeepro coming in April some time thanks to their Kickstarter campaign. Very excited for that one!

 But that's all for now. Next I'll mount the camera and get some video from it! 

Slight delay

 Ok, school and work have been slowing me down a lot lately but I've managed to assemble more things. I got the camera system in the mail last week and briefly tried it out. Here's the links for the camera and transmitter. Hopefully I'll get to test the half mile range sometime this week. But it looks good so far and hopefully I'll have some video for ya.
 I found and joined a website called GrabCad that has saved me a bunch of time of drawing the Arduino boards. So all I had to do was quickly draw the servos and camera for this latest drawing:

 I'm still working on the camera arm as well as the front arm. I'm leaning towards a metal detector system instead of an electromagnet for the rock sampling part of the front arm. I really have no intentions of collecting the rocks so I guess I really don't need to try and pick them up. Just sending a signal back saying how metallic the rock is, would be just fine. And actually now that I think of it, that would be a bit more informative than simply trying to pick up the rock.

 Let's see, what else have I done so far.... Oh a video!

 Since the suspension is taking a lot longer than I thought, I just glued the motors and wheels on so I could at least test code and stuff while I'm waiting for a laser cutter and/or a 3D printer like this one that I'm currently a backer for. If all goes well, I'll have my very own desktop 3D printer by April. *Fingers crossed*

So that's about all I've got so far. I'm still working on the solar panels and monitoring the voltage. Hopefully I can do that soon since the sun is now starting to go away for the winter. I'm off school for 3 days this week so hopefully I'll make some serious progress during this time. Stay tuned!

A brief update:

 So I haven't been able to do much these past couple of weeks. My work schedule changed and I'm back in school now too until June so progress has slowed a lot. I did manage to put a donation button up just in case any of you highly interested folk would like to see more action, you can feel free to donate and possibly even relieve me of the burden of working. (fingers crossed)
 All I've been able to do so far is draw on Inventor some more.

 Kind of trying to figure out what would work best for the suspension parts and eventual springs or torsion bars. This is all I have so far. I'm thinking .080 thick polystyrene to make the suspension arms out of. That way they can be strong yet hallow so I can run the motor wires through. I'm also thinking of using the bearings I got for my, now shelved, drive system and put those in all the hinge points for better stability.
 The Hack Factory should be getting a new laser cutter this month so hopefully I can pop in there and use it to cut this polystyrene. Otherwise I'll need to spend a lot of time with a dremel or jig saw cutting out all the pieces.
 It's so hard knowing that all I need are these last parts made to start test driving but I don't have the time to do it. Very frustrating. It'll happen though. The good side of this is that the more I wait, the better my ideas get.

By golly, I think this just might work!

Over the weekend I received the Virtuabotix temperature/humidity sensor and plugged it into the Arduino like the included diagram shows, downloaded the library from the Virtuabotix website, and right away I started getting temperature, humidity, and dew point readings. This little gadget will come in handy for monitoring the inside of the rover so I know the electronics are safe. I imagine in sunlight, the inside of the rover will be like the inside of a car so knowing how hot it gets in there, I can decide whether I need to use a bit of Mylar to keep the sun out or if it's not really needed. And also, knowing the temperature inside at night will be good so I can protect against dew build  up on the circuits.

 Since I was now getting information back from my rover, I decided it would be nice to know how many volts I have left on the battery. So I googled the code for such things and actually found the code on Arduino's website. 4 lines of code and a wire running to analog I/O port number 0. Since I'm dealing with a 10 volt battery and the I/O port can only handle 5 volts, I made a simple voltage divider circuit so the port only sees half the voltage and then I tweaked the code a little so it reports back 10 volts instead of 5. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this set up before I took it apart to work on other things. But I'm sure you'll see it in action soon enough.

 I went out and got the solar panels I needed from Radio Shack and tested those on Sunday. Here I have a picture of a quick set up to take the 11.5 volts generated from the solar panels down to under 5 so I can monitor that voltage as well.

 I also received the ultrasonic range finder in the mail the other day too. I really haven't played with this yet but it should come in handy later for obstacle avoidance when I finally get this project rolling.

 Which brings me to my favorite part. I got the last 4 motors in the mail yesterday. I soldered on some wires, quickly hot glued them in place with some wheels attached, added lines of code for the new motors, and got a few tests done this morning.

 Yes I'm using a sugar dispenser for a test stand. It was the only thing tall and skinny enough around for such a quick test. But anyway, in the video you can see the Amps measured from the battery. I switch between high and low speeds to see the changes in Amp rating. 220 mAhs for all 6 motors on high! This means I can drive around for, ideally, 7 hours on a charge. Once I get the camera and servos in place, that number will likely drop quite a bit though. 

Now of course I had to set it on the floor just to see what would happen. 

 It kind of reminds me of when I was a little kid trying out ice skates for the first time. Obviously I'm not going to simply hot glue motors on and expect them to stay put. So now the next phase in this project is the suspension. I'm thinking hollow tubes for suspension arms, to hide the wires in, and some kind of torsion spring to allow for movement. More on this later. Stay tuned!

A successful drive-motor test!

Nothing too fancy here. Just a couple of my new motors hot glued on with some wheels attached. But I was able to prove that just 2 of these little motors with their gear reduction systems are powerful enough to move the rover.

 So naturally after this test, I ordered 4 more motors from Amazon. And also added a temperature/humidity sensor and a distance sensor for when I finally get this thing moving and outside.
 Also since I had it moving back and forth on the floor, I thought I'd test out my speed settings. In this quick video, you can see me switching from low speed to high speed and back to low. (Sorry I wasn't really watching where I was aiming the camera on this one. Big pet peeve of mine! But you get the idea.)

 I can range the motor inputs from 0 to 210. Low is currently set at 50 and high is set at 200. I'm thinking low needs to be even slower so maybe I'll drop the number down to 20. But that can wait until I get all 6 motors properly attached.

 I'm also leaning towards this Autopilot so the rover can follow GPS way points instead of relying solely on commands from my laptop. It's a bit 'spendy' but this is kind of the ultimate goal with this project so it is a little bit necessary. Otherwise I can go with this GPS tracker to simply send coordinates back and I can plot them on Google Earth for some project "cool factor" points. This option is much cheaper but really has no functionality since the wireless range on the Arduino's XBEE system is about 300ft, which means I'll be able to physically see where it's at.

 Expensive parts are starting to lead me to maybe look into crowd funding for this project. I think total cost of parts, both used and not used, and tools that I needed for this project, is around $500. And I still need the $100 camera system, solar panels, suspension parts, some kind of parachute system, and an entire guided rocket to build. Sooo... next on my to do list is to look into crowd funding websites. Soo.. Stay tuned!  

A maker's dilemma

 For the past couple of weeks I've been working on a prototype for the drive gear system. With the laser at The Hack Factory not cooperating (I'm told a really nice one will be in the shop some time in Sept.), I had to resort to some old school model making. I printed the outline of what I needed on a piece of paper and stuck it to a sheet of acrylic and cut out my pieces with a band saw. Then had to do some sanding but eventually I got this:

 All the pieces I need to put this gearbox together! So I started putting it together and filed the holes big enough for the bearings and motor and lined everything up. I was reluctant to actually glue everything together so I used some double sided tape and hot glue to produce this:

Then I added the motor and slapped on some wheels just to see if the gear system was strong enough for one to pull the whole thing along.

I started out with a simple test to see if it would even work. So I put it on a piece of tupperware and sent it the drive signal.

  And it actually worked! A bit louder than I thought it would be too. After this video it started to skip some teeth and sounded like the battery was going to die. I think the motor got warm enough to soften the hot glue I had holding it in place and caused it to move away from the gear that it was so perfectly meshing with. I also decided that the skipping wasn't horrible so it was time for a floor test. No video of this however since it didn't actually go anywhere. I didn't think it was necessary to glue the main gear onto the axle for the test so of course it slipped and there for did not turn the wheel. Oops..

 So with the battery sounding like it was going to die, I did some electrical testing. The battery was holding strong at 10 volts so I switched to measuring the amps and was a little shocked to see that the motor and gear system, along with the arduino boards, was drawing 750 mAhs. Sooo.. I figure with all six in place, my little 1600 mAh battery would last about 15 minutes at best. Judging by the sound of the motor, it would be far less. 

 I ended up ordering a couple of motors with their own gear reduction system on them. $15 a piece so not too bad. But they were 6 volt motors so I wasn't sure how they'd work.

 So my dilemma is that they do work! Very well actually! They're super quiet and total draw from this and the arduino boards is only about 150mAh! That's about 10mah from the motor! I could drive all day with all 6 of these hooked up. So I guess my dilemma is kind of a no brainer but I still feel like I put so much time and effort into that gear reduction system, it would be a shame not to use it. I guess we'll see how much power these little guys have once I figure out a way to mount them and attach the wheels. Perhaps tomorrow I'll rig up a quick attachment and see if the 2 motors I have will be powerful enough to move everything.

  Also, on the C++ side of things, I figured out pretty easily how to send information back from the Arduino so that I know I'm getting a good signal and also what command I sent it. I also tried some code so that I can control the speed of the motors as well. So by pressing numbers 1 thru 4, I can give it 4 different speed settings (or as many as I want I suppose).

 Hopefully by this weekend I'll get this thing moving and more motors ordered. I'm 4 months behind but finally I might have some real movement!

Virtual Progress!

 Ok so I haven't made much actual progress in the past couple of weeks but I have made some pretty big strides in the virtual world. Still teaching myself 3D AutoCAD again, I managed to come up with this drawing for the 6 gear boxes:

 Since AutCAD doesn't use my graphics card, I had to draw the gears as discs so things move smoothly. When I was all done with this, I put together a 2D file for the laser cutter at The Hack Factory.

 These are all the parts I'd need for one gear box made out of .090 thick acrylic. It should have been a simple upload and cut sort of thing but to my dismay, I drove a half hour to get to there and found out the laser cutter was not working properly and also that the software to run the thing is some horrible program called MoshiDraw. No good came of this and so now.. I wait...

 In the mean time I've been teaching myself AutoDesk Inventor via Youtube videos and a free student copy. It took some getting use to and a lot of frustration but I think I've figured it out for now. So here's a video of the gear assembly in action..

I managed to figure out how to combine parts and drive the motor gear to, intern, drive the other gears along with the wheel. Pretty cool stuff. And now, today, I quickly drew up the box and suspension arms which also have a bit of animation to them too. Unfortunately I was having trouble mirroring my gearboxes so I could have all 6 in place. Something about not being able to copy holes and constraints so I'll work on that a bit more. So this is what I've got so far:

 Sorry for the screwy phone pic. I'm in a hurry to upload this and run off to work. Hope you enjoy my progress and hopefully I'll get some parts laser-ed out soon!

A bit of a vacation

Ok so I took a few weeks off to do some amazing trips with Cristin to Space Fest in Tucson and then to Alaska to visit a friend. Before we left I did manage to do a quick test of the motor drive system though.

This was actually a test of 2 different motors with 2 different gear ratios. I had ordered 6 of those tiny motors I posted about earlier and when I tested one of them, it seemed a bit weak so I grabbed a motor out of a little ZipZap truck, got a spur gear that meshed with it, and put it on the right front wheel. The rest of the little truck is actually seen in the video holding up the back end of the rover for the test. The left front wheel is driven by one of the little motors I ordered and it's corresponding spur gear. As the video shows, the little motors barely have enough power to get it rolling but when it does get going, it looked like it could go way faster than I want. I calculated it out, if I had all 6 motors on this thing and got it rolling, it would reach a speed of around 3 to 4 mph. So a fast walk. But no power for climbing hills or little rocks and I think for how light it is, 3 or 4 mph could be dangerous. Soooo...
 I ordered some new gears to put between the motor and the wheel for a little gear reduction. With some new calculations, the wheels went from 520 rpm's to a mere 50. That's a nice 31 feet per minute with hopefully a bunch more power. (I haven't gotten the gears hooked up yet)

 This is as far as I've gotten before the great vacation of 2013. As you can see, I also ordered bearings because I didn't like how wobbly the wheels were and also ordered some foam airplane wheels with tread on them. I currently have all the parts I think I need to get this thing rolling. I just have to draw up some mounting brackets for the gear-motor-wheel assembly and then make a trip to The Hack Factory to use the laser cutter to cut out my parts. Almost there. Just need to sit down and do it!

As for the great vacation of 2013, +Cristin Finnigan and I just got back a few days ago from the Alaska leg of our tour where we visited our Iditarod mushing friend, Jodi Bailey. Her and her husband Dan were such great hosts! Jodi took us out four wheeling on some state trails, set us up with a tour at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to see how they do their remote sensing of volcanoes and wild fires, showed us around AlaskaLand and the Yukon Quest office, and then had a great Solstice party where she invited wide range of folks for us to meet. These people ranged from a born and raised trapper, to goat farmers, to post doctorates at the university. The university folks told us how to get in with a research job while working on our masters and eventual doctorates. Very intriguing idea that we are now taking into some serious consideration. Anyways, here's some pics from Alaska:

Out four wheeling

A giant model of old towns in Alaska

An old gold dredge

 Apparently all the really good pictures were on her camera. But you get the idea. 

As for Space Fest, we traveled down to Tucson a few weeks ago to go meet some NASA astronauts and learn about how space travel is changing with all the new companies getting involved. We even met Geoff Notkin of The Science Channel's Meteorite Men who kind of took us under his wing for an evening of music and travel stories. While we were there, we got to meet Fred Hiase of Apollo 13, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean of Apollo 12, Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14, and Cristin found a friend in JoAnn Carr who was married to Sky Lab astronaut Gerald Carr. Here's some pics from that event. Again, all the good pics are on her camera.

Some of the Astronauts at their booths

More Astronauts and non Astronauts

A view from a walkway at the resort

Dick Gordon and Alan Bean having some fun with a really tall guy.

The Apollo panel hosted by Dr. Brian Cox

 So that's it. Now that I'm caught up on the blog and home for a while, not to mention full of inspiration from all the wonderful people we've met over the past couple weeks, I think I'll get this silly little rover of mine up and moving. Stay tuned for more progress...

The little motor that.. almost could.

 I had a little bit of time yesterday to quickly throw a motor, gear, and wheel on and test it out to see how it all works together.

 It went well except I'm afraid the motor might not have enough power. I think all 6 motors combined will give it enough power to move but probably not enough power for climbing over little rocks and up hills. Sooo... perhaps I'll look into stronger motors that won't exceed my 1.2 Amp limit. But this is all for now. 

+Cristin Finnigan and I are headed off to Space Fest in Tucson, bright and early tomorrow morning! We're really looking forward to meeting lots of like minded people, meeting astronauts, and hearing all about the awesome field of space exploration! This is going to be great!! Perhaps I'll post some pics when we get back. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Change of plans... sorta..

Over the Mother's Day weekend/Fishing Opener, I had a second to take a rubber O-ring I got from the hardware store and try it out on the main drive pulleys and decided I didn't like it. Inconsistent and a little sloppy. So I really started to lean towards 6 small motors to drive this thing. I did a bunch of research the other day and found a bunch of motors with, at best, a 900 mAh draw all the way up to 4 Amps. That was never going to work. The Arduino motor controller has 4 motor connections with a 1.2 Amp limit on each. Since I have 6 motors, I'll need to double up motors on 2 of the motor connections which means, by my figuring, I'd need to find motors with at most 600 mAh.

 I happened to have a Zip Zap truck laying around so I stole the motor from that and tested it. It only had a 140 mAh draw! I remembered seeing similar motors in the micro helicopter section at the local hobby store so I made a run there after school yesterday. They were nice enough to let me test the only motor they had in stock and it came up around 140 mAhs too! So I bought the one and ordered 5 more. They should be in by the middle of next week. Here's a pic of the one I have:

So with something to measure now, I sat down and added to my CAD drawing. 

  I also found the limits to my computer after having more than one purple gear on the screen at a time so I changed the others to a smooth disc so I could still rotate the drawing. So now I need to draw in the brackets that hold the motors in place but you get the idea. Also, maybe some day I'll draw better wheels. 

  Here's a roughed out finished designed so folks can see what I have planned. The camera and rock sampling arm are by no means done. Just a quick addition to the drawing so you get an idea.

  So that's it so far. I'll get some time this weekend to actually work on it so we'll see how far I get without the other motors. 

  If only I had a laser cutter and a 3D printer! This would be so much closer to being done!

Update!

Ok, this week I plan to mount the gear box and find an appropriate belt to use on this whole belt drive system. Gotta run off to class here in a few minutes and then work after that sooo... perhaps this weekend.. sometime..

Anyways, here's some of my favorite distractions..

Kerbal Space Program

Farming Simulator ... I know. But it's relaxing!

Project Apollo for Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

Oh, and make sure you feed the fish while you're here. I tend to forget..

It all starts here.

Back in the day when I was a young teenager building rockets with my neighborhood friends, I had the crazy idea that one day I would build a small rover or lander of some kind and launch it out into the small Minnesota field where I grew up. The most likely of things a kid could do would be to build a lander that was solar powered and at least could broadcast sound back via a small walkie-talkie.
  Well.. as life goes, distractions happened and my little project had to wait. Finishing high school, then several years of college, several moves, jobs, girlfriends, bands, and bars all became first priority. Soon, something like 16 years had gone by before I found my inner child again at the age of 31.
  The dream never really went away though and for all those years I kept an ever changing design in my head until one day I found a cell phone battery and a small RC tank laying around and officially started The Rover Project on Sept. 30th 2011.
  This blog is a running documentary on this childhood dream of mine and it will follow every test, new idea, and inevitable failure along the way to me getting a semi-autonomous homemade rover built, packed into a rocket, sent out into a field, and withstanding the elements for an entire weekend of rock sampling.
  Currently I work and go to school both full time and have a fairly busy social life so I typically don't have much time to spend on this project nor the tools to achieve what I actually want. Now are the days where I truly regret leaving the model shop I used to work at. So now, I do what I can with a fairly limited budget and a borrowed Dremel.
  Explanations aside, lets get back into the lengthy start of this blog with the first video I shot of a tank tread and battery crawling across the counter.

  I dissected the tank and wired the battery to one of the treads to produce my first test in a series of more tests to come.

 After I found that I could successfully power one tread with the battery, I hot glued both of them to my little bread board and plugged in the battery to produce this short test exactly a month later:

  This month long space between small tests would actually set the pace for this entire project. Now, I should say, at the time I started this project, I didn't have any real electronics knowledge (something I will remedy later in this blog). But just basic electricity and a love for electronic toys, especially anything Radio Controlled.
  After getting the project mobile, I needed a way to control it so I went to the only means of control I knew anything about and that was RC.
  Unfortunately I don't have any videos or pictures of this next phase because honestly I thought it was kind of silly and far from anything I could possibly launch in a rocket. Not to mention I never thought anyone would ever be interested in my childhood dream so writing about it and keeping a journal of the progress was pretty far from my mind. So I'll just have to describe this point the best I can.

  Sadly, my giant collection of Legos was boxed away in my mom's house which was 2 states away so I went to the Lego store to pick up some "prototyping" supplies. I ended up building a platform that would carry my project for the next year and a half until just a few weeks ago.

    This is actually a pic I took about a month ago because I realized I never took any pictures of my first test platform. (You can actually see a hint of things to come sitting next to it.) So originally inside that big hole in the middle, I had two servos from one of my RC trucks. I rigged up a small circuit with an on/off/charge switch and two button switches that the servos could press, wired the motors to the cell phone battery via the button switches and on/off/charge switch, and then had the servos and (at the time) the stationary camera on their own battery packs. With all that in place, I could drive this silly Lego contraption around and when the cell phone battery died, I'd plug it into a solar panel, flip the switch to charge, and let it sit in the sun for a while. 

 This accomplished several learning phases for me as a new rover designer/operator.

1: I learned how long a 900mAh battery would last me. (about 5 minutes or so)

2: I learned A LOT about charging batteries, via the internet, and found that my little solar panel needed to                put out more than the 3.5 volts that the battery had and at a rate fast enough to fill the 900mAh capacity while the sun was still out. So I selected the 6V 100mAh setting on my solar panel and let it sit for 9 hours. Slow, but it worked.

3: I also learned the capabilities of the wireless camera. This little guy went out to 300 feet with a 9V battery no problem. It broadcasts pretty decent video along with sound and claims to have the capability to go 450 feet and last up to 8 hours on a 9V. This was enough for what I wanted. I was so far just happy to sit in the living room and drive this little thing down the driveway and down the sidewalk a little bit. 

4: I soon found out I would need a new solar panel however, since this one was not powerful enough to power the camera on it's own like I had hoped.

I set out to find a new solar panel and settled with this one. It had more than enough power to charge a battery and run the camera. However it was attached to a heavy 1/8 inch piece of glass which would certainly not do for the weight limits of standard hobby rocket motors. Naturally that glass needed to go. Unfortunately it was held on with what turned out to be a layer of clear epoxy over the whole thing and the only way to get it off was with a heat gun I had at work. 

  After a lot of heat and slow peeling, I got about this far and cracked one of the cells. This has proved to be a bit more difficult than I hoped and so, currently, I am in the market for new lighter solar panel. This feature has been put on the back burner for now while I focus my limited time on more important things on this project. Like, how to get away from the RC components and get it more autonomous and computer controlled. 

  So this is the part where I stumbled across Arduino and my whole roving world changed. And much of my own world changed as well. I started watching Youtube videos of what people have done with their Arduino projects and couldn't wait to get my hands on one! At the age of 31, I was like little Ralphie Parker, in A Christmas Story, who, all he wanted was that darn Red Rider BB Gun. Telling my very supportive girlfriend +Cristin Finnigan all about Arduino and the things I could do with it! Showing her videos and websites at all hours of the day! I found all the stuff I needed to get started on Amazon for a mere $100! (I see the prices have dropped considerably in the past year) I found The Arduino UNO R3, the motor controller, 4 motors (which I didn't use), and a book to get me started! It was all there and ready for glory!!

  But sadly, at the time, we had just moved to Minnesota from the Chicago area and hadn't found the best of jobs yet so it would have to wait. So for the next 3 months I researched and planned, until one day in August of 2012, I had managed to free up the money and placed the order.

  

 During my research, I had re-ignited my original college ideas of going to school for robotics. I also realized why I never went for robotics in the first place. Schools that teach the cool kind of robotics you see on TV, don't seem to exist in Minnesota. Or at least nothing I could find or have access to. So I settled on a 2 year degree in electronics and would teach myself C++ in my spare time. 

  So with Cristin's blessing and the statement of "Go forth and be brilliant", I quit my assembly job at Ziess and signed up for day classes at Hennepin Tech. This also meant that I would need to find a second shift job somewhere. Fortunately, with my Bachelor's in Industrial Technology, I found a job right away working for GE Power and Water making industrial water filters on second shift. Cristin also got a better paying job in the wind energy field. Things were now in place for future greatness! (Still not sure what that might be yet, but things are in place for it.)

  The Arduino parts soon arrived and I quickly dove into the programming book. I also found Sciguy14's youtube videos, (which I highly recommend) infact, here's one now:

Arduino Tutorial

  

  After making the LED blink a few times, I decided this was not going to get my rover moving anytime soon, so I plugged in the motor controller, wired in my tank treads, and went to work on coding. I Googled something like, "arduino code for operating motors with a motor controller" and sifted through the results to find very useful code which I copied and pasted into the Arduino software. I ran a test and it actually worked! Then I started tweaking the code to find things that worked better. (if you'd like to see the code, ask for it. I'm just not sure how to post it without taking up too much space on my blog.)

  

  I did a lot of reading and found out you can control the Arduino with what is called the Serial Monitor under Tools on the Arduino software. So with some more code searching, I managed to give this thing some control using the WASD and spacebar keys. Unfortunately, I need to type the letter and hit enter to send the command. Which now days, I've grown to kind of like because it feels more like I'm sending it a command much like NASA would do but without the delay.

Yes, i'm dragging a 9V battery behind it. It was a test after all. I just wanted to see how the code worked and how hard it would be to control it. As you can see, I also added a servo to the camera (which wasn't plugged in) so I can look around. This bit of code actually was a little tricky because I needed to slow the servo down so that it didn't just rapid over to the angle I'd send it. I ended up having it turn a degree with every ',' and '.' I'd send it, with a small delay between reading commands. So I could send it something like, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and enter, to make it turn a bunch of degrees left and a bunch of periods and enter for right.  

  Later I ordered a wireless card for the Arduino.

And found out I had to program the two little wireless antenna cards as well. Fortunately this was just a one time bit of code that needed to be sent to these chips. It did take me a bit of internet digging and some trial and error but I got them working using a recommended program called X-CTU. 

  With everything working now, I needed some kind of recharge able battery and the one cell phone battery just wasn't doing it anymore. So I found some more and wired them in series to produce around 11 volts.

 I knew the Arduino and Camera had built in voltage regulators so a couple volts extra really wasn't going to hurt. And my aforementioned solar panel was able to charge this pack in about 3 hours. (I actually ended up destroying the solar panel about a month ago so it was still operational at this point.) Unfortunately, once again I failed to document how everything, including the camera all ran with this little battery pack, taped to the back, not dragging anymore. It all worked great until I started setting up for building the actual rover I wanted to fly. Since my actual design for this project had wheels instead of tank treads, I needed a gear system to drive the whole thing. So I ordered this gearbox. 

  I got the gearbox and put it all together. Then I wired the battery pack to both motors and it went WAAAHHhhhhhh.... About 5 seconds and my pack was toast. At this point I have about a semester and a half of electronics school under my belt so I grab my volt meter and found the middle battery had 0 volts and the other 2 were still at 3volts. Bad battery I thought, so I dug up another one I had laying around. Tested it at 3.5 volts, soldered it back in with the other 2 and tried again. WAAahhhh... Dead again. 0 volts on the middle battery. So I decide to grab a standard 9v and test the Amps on this thing. 900mAh just for the gearbox alone! The treads, Arduino, and camera were only pulling about 600mAh all together. So at this point I realized my lightweight idea of cell phone batteries was not going to work. I needed something stronger! 

  I ran out to Radio Shack and picked up a 1600mAh 9.6v rechargeable battery pack. No fooling around now! It so far is the heaviest part of the whole rover. Which might be ok since I probably do need a little weight just to get some traction while climbing over things. So after a successful test of the gearbox, Arduino set up, and camera all plugged into the battery pack, I deemed it.. good enough. The whole system pulled 1200mAh while running the motors and about 500mAh just sitting there waiting for a command. 

  I plugged the battery into my tank treaded rig and used it to continue to test code and just have some fun while I worked on the design for a more rocket worthy rover. 

Here's a little video of me testing the whole thing out. 

 

At this point I set it aside to focus on re-learning AutoCAD so that I can figure out what should work for a design before I start building anything. This is what I've come up with so far:

  

  The idea is to have the solar panel on top, 6 wheels driven by the gearbox and a TON of pulleys (22 in all), a servo out front to lift and lower an arm with an electromagnet for rock sampling (not drawn yet), and a servo on the back with the camera on a pole pointing forward over the solar panel (also not drawn yet). 

  So now we are up to what I have accomplished so far. 

  Nothing's really held in place at this moment. This picture is just a test fitting of all the components inside the box. I do have some of the shafts cut to the right length and some more pulleys on. The other night, I put a rubber band on the gearbox pulley and 2 others inside the box and turned it on. Basically it worked like I thought it would. The rubber band stretched and released with every slow revolution of the gearbox, causing the two smaller pulleys to rotate in a fast jerking motion. So at this point i'm waiting for a time to run to the hardware store to see about gasket making kits so I can basically make my own non-stretching belts. And if that doesn't work, I've been eyeing up 6 of those small motors they use in the quad rotor helicopters. 

 So this is where I'm at as of today 5/7/13. I have about 2 weeks left of this school year so I'm assuming I'll get a lot farther once I'm free for the summer. I had hoped I'd have it at least driving around by the end of April but now I'm hoping by the end of this month. I really want to do drop tests, overnight tests, and maybe rocket tests this summer. So we'll see how it all goes and I will do my best to keep this blog updated as I go. 

  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my second round of childhood. Feel free to comment (as long as it's constructive) and add me to your google+ circle if you want. We all could use more like minded friends.