attaching rc parts to kit

[kenjara]

Hello,

I have many RC parts and am wondering if I can use them to take control of the robot.

My first question is would it be possible to add a receiver to the model to control it.

from an RC point of few I would think that each motor would have an electronic speed controller that you can control from 2 different channels. I am not sure if this is correct as I have yet to build an RC tracked vehicle.

Secondly I have loads of nimh and lipo battery packs. Can I connect these instead of AA batteries. Is there anything I should watch out for?

Thanks,

Shane

[Alan]

Hi Shane,

The NiMh battery packs should be fine to use. Ideally you want to aim for 7.2V if possible. LiPo batteries should also be fine to use, but take care that you don't use the board's trickle charge circuit with LiPos. You can find more specific details in the manual for the Explorer PCB.

I don't have much experience with RC technology I'm afraid, so can't give you much guidance. You may be able to drive the Rover 5 chassis from RC components as it essentially just consists of 2 DC brushed motors. The Explorer PCB provides motor drivers for each of the motors which take a PWM signal in to control the speed.

For driving the Rover 5 around remotely I find that the easiest thing to do is to attach a bluetooth module to the Seeeduino using a Grove to Female connector cable. You can then use a phone with bluetooth to drive the robot around in a similar way to this blog post. Let me know if you're interested, as I've got some 'bluetooth car' code for the Rover 5 kit lying around somewhere.

Regards

Alan

[kenjara]

Hi Alan,

I might have a look at controlling it through Bluetooth via my phone then. I have android experience so I think it will be a nice project to make and app for.

Do you know what the connector from the battery pack to the rover board is called?

If I can get hold of some I can create some adapters for my battery packs.

After starting to build the rover last night I found it might be a challenge to fit the batteries I have in there.

I have some 7.4v Lipo batteries that are about half the size of the supplied battery pack that I may try.

Do you think it will be able to tolerate 7.4v ok?

Thanks,

Shane

[Alan]

Hi Shane,

I don't have the specific part number for the battery connector. I was told by Dagu that it's a JST connector and I can order spares from them, but I haven't been able to get anything from them that would allow me to order it independently. If you can find it in the JST catalogue I'd be impressed.

Depending on which revision of the Explorer PCB you got, you may also have screw terminals on the bottom of the PCB? You can attach the battery pack there as well. If you haven't got the screw terminals let me know and I can post out a spare connector and crimp terminals.

Using a 7.4V battery pack with the Explorer PCB should be ok, you just need to watch out for the 'Servo' power supply (read the power section of the Explorer PCB manual for details). This is because the Servo power supply is provided by passing the battery voltage through 3 diodes to achieve a voltage drop. With a 7.2V battery pack you should get ~5.6V for servos, if you use a battery pack with a higher voltage, then the servo voltage will also be higher.

Regards

Alan