I'm looking to make a robot with my raspberry pi model B and have been researching controlling motors.
I need something cool to show off at an upcoming Comp Sci career fair at my school.
So far all of the boards I have looked at only easily allow the controlling of about 4 motors, and I am not experienced enough to tackle soldering my own yet.
I need to control at minimum 2 motors (one for each track of the movement) and 4 servos for the attached MeArm.
I would also like to control 2 more servos if that is possible to integrate a movable camera.
I could achieve this in other ways, such integrating it into the MeArm, or only using one servo for looking up/down and relying on the movement of entire unit for left/right.
The absolute minimum would be 3 servos for the MeArm (taking away the MeArms ability to rotate, and relying on the rotation of the unit to grab objects) and two motors for left and right tracks.
Anybody have any tips/suggestions? This is my first foray into programming for hardware, so I could use a little advice/design tips.
Preferably cheap because I am a poor college student.
Below are my current plans for the build :
First Build:
Raspberry Pi model B (already own)
Unknown Motor shield
Tracked robot chasis pre-assembled (found a cheap one on amazon that looks like it will do the trick with a few mods)
MeArm (have my Dad cutting out the acrylic for me this week)
Wanted features:
Fully functional wireless control via wifi dongle
Full control of the MeArm
Possible added features once the above is achieved:
Integrate camera/streaming through wifi.
Build an online structure so that I can control the robot and view streaming via the internet.(have seen a few people use similar features, so I may be able to pull this off)
A display to give the unit a face that can display a things, possibly an emotion indicator (this one would be the last feature for me to integrate only once everything else works, it may not make it in)
Concerns:
Power. I would like to buy one battery pack, such as <a href="https://www.adafruit.com/products/1566">this</a> but am not as knowledgeable on power.
The above unit outputs 5v 2A which would have to be modified to power the board and motors.
I may have to settle for two separate power sources.
Streaming. the combination of running the motors, running the camera, streaming, all over wifi, I am concerned about the pi not being able to keep up. That is why I am adding each feature one at a time to see what I can pull off.
Thank you for any advice!