A wall crawling detour...

So i have been searching for the files and pictures i had about my electronic cricket project but i cant find them. They are in my old laptop which i have to get back from a friend of mine...

Excuses excuses....

Shut up! Anyway... in the mean time lets talk about the other project that im currently working on.

Lets talk about line following robots. Traditionally these lil guys are autonomous robots which follow a line laid out in the form of a track.


Hence the name "Line Follower" ...Duuhhhhh!

Err... right. Most of the line followers I've seen are robots that follow tracks on the ground. Like the one shown in the picture below.

Ive always had an interest in robotics, what if we made a line follower that defied gravity and followed tracks on walls. Make it a wall crawling line follower. Now THAT would be cool.

Lets take a look at the three basic things every line follower needs...

1) DC Motors.
2) MicroController.
3) Sensors.

For our line follower we will use servos. They are easy to operate, heck most of the work is done for you.

Slacker....

Hey, havent you heard the term "Dont re-invent the wheel?"

Excuses!

No. Its just good engineering practice... look it up my alter ego friend.

Whatever.

Go ahead and sulk if you want. We are using Servos.

In order to make the robot crawl on vertical walls lets use magnetized wheels. You can get disc magnets from hobbyist stores. This way you can expect the robot to be able to traverse a vertical wall such as a whiteboard (this guys gonna be crawling all over the whiteboard in my cube at work heh heh).

For a microcontroller i will be using the 3.3V Arduino Pro mini. Awesome little uC. Cheap and easy to work with.

For the sensors we will be using Optical detectors/Photo transistors.

For those of you who want to exactly what ill be using, check out the following list:

1) 2x Servos
 http://www.rctoys.com/rc-toys-and-parts/DF-SRV-6G/RC-PARTS-DRAGANFLY-SERVOS.html?utm_source=googlebase_froogle&utm_medium=US&utm_term=DF-SRV-6G

2) 8x Magnetic Discs, 4 for each wheel.
 http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=R8201

3) Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V
http://www.hobbyengineering.com/H4766.html

4) 2x OptoDetector/Phototransistor QRD1114
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/246

5)1x Light weight battery.
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__11874__ZIPPY_138mAh_20C_Single_Cell_.html


Ill probably add more to the list as i work on this dude.
Im visiting my sister over the holidays so it doesn't seem as if ill be getting much work done. However lets see! Ill keep you posted!