If you want an affordable way to drive DC motors, to control servos, and to add an ADC to your project, then the Dagu Arduino Mini Driver Board could be well worth a look. It can be hooked up to a Raspberry Pi with a USB cable to provide the hardware interface for a Pi project. Or alternatively, it can be used alone as a much smaller, and cheaper alternative to an Arduino with a motor shield.

Documentation is a bit thin on the ground for this board however, so we thought we’d put together a simple getting started guide, and show you how you can use the Mini Driver to control some motors.

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Mobile robots become much more flexible and fun when you add Bluetooth or some other form of wireless communication to them. You can control them remotely yourself, or connect them to a PC which coordinate the movement of multiple robots, or record data from their sensors.

Now, Dagu’s Adventure Bot is a very versatile robot, and has lots of cool features, but one thing it lacks is wireless control. Well we’re going to put that right, and show you how you can use a Bluetooth module, and the Arduino SoftwareSerial library to get your Dagu Adventure Bot talking wirelessly to your PC and/or your smartphone. We also provide some example code which lets you drive the Adventure Bot around using the most excellent MOBOT BT Car app.

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If you’re new to the world of robotics, or if you want a nice platform to learn robot programming, then the Adventure Bot by Dagu is a great choice. This guide takes you through the process of getting started with the Adventure Bot, and running your first program. Continue reading →

Robots need sensors in order to learn about their environment, and typically for mobile robots, this involves adding switches or contact sensors to the outside of the robot in order to work out when it’s hit something. Now this tutorial shows how by using an accelerometer, you can get rid of those sensors!

The Dagu Micro Magician V2 is a very versatile control board. One of its many features is an onboard MMA7361L accelerometer, and this means that it’s possible to use it to build a robot that can respond to obstacles without having to use traditional bump sensors such as microswitches. The basic idea is that a bump can be detected by looking at changes in the accelerations experienced by the robot.

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