Will Jessop's Writings

Sailing, Food, Programming, Technology, and other things
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| tags:robotics electronics Raspberry Pi Go

Secret project

A very small motor with an in-built gearbox

One of my new motors. It's about 10mm in diameter

I’ve started work on a top-secret project. I can’t really hide the fact that it’s going to be a robot, but I’m not going to say what it is, at least not just yet.

So, last night I was designing a 3d printed mount for the tiny 3-6V motors I bought and I started to wonder if I could cobble something together using my old technic lego. I dug out the lego, but on top of that was my dusty old meccano set, even better!

WIthin a short amount of time I had some motor mounts and a frame made, including tensioning springs for the caterpillar tracks. All that was left was to take it for a spin. I hooked it up to my Raspberry Pi via my Custard Pi breakout board, a ULN2803A and a custom voltage regulator circuit.

A very small motor with an in-built gearbox

Motor mount

Seeing if it drives in a straight line:

Hooked up to the Raspberry Pi, controlled by microswitches. You can see the top of the Custard Pi poking out over the mess of wires that is my breadboard and the cheap wireless dongle/antenna I got from eBay. The voltage regulator circuit makes an appearance being dragged along behind:

A PCB with no components on it and a bag of componenets

MotorPiTX kit

Right now it only goes forwards because I didn’t have the circuitry for anything else, but I got my MotorPiTX in the mail this morning so that will change soon.