Raspberry Pi : Football Car
We are modifying our line tracking car into a car that can be used to play football. In this project, we have one new equipment: a stepper motor. A stepper motor is a motor that we can use code to adjust the angle that we want it to turn. It consist of four main magnets inside which will turn on and off depending on the value that we put in the code. There will be a sequence and order of value that we should enter, in order to make the stepper motor turn properly. In each step, the magnets will adjust the angle of the rotor by a bit so, if we keep repeating the step, the motor will be able to turn. In our car, we take out all the unneeded sensor and also add the stepper motor to develop new function that will enhanced our car to be capable of playing football. We first design our car; we decide to give our car hands that will trap a ball when it come in range. The hands will be made out of cardboard; we cut cardboard into small pieces and stick it on top of each other, around 4 pieces, to make it thick so that it will be able to handle the weight of the stepper motor. The stepper motor will be attached at the edge of the hand and Popsicle sticks will be attached to the motor to work as the door. In the back of our car, we add crossed sticks and a cardboard to prevent other cars to tackle that point and cause our car to flip. Our car is quite heavy so we decide to add four more battery cells to the driver. This improve the motor performance, thus increasing the car speed. Some problem we faced after testing the car in real scenario is that when we move backward the ball will push the Popsicle stick door out and get away. We fix this problem by adding a cardboard to the Popsicle stick door to make the door more stable and the ball won't be able to push it way out. For our code, we just need to change our car from driving automatically to manually. We use the pygame function to read the input or the button we press on our keyboard and make our car do something according to the button that was pressed. For example, up arrow to go forward, left to turn left, right to turn right, down to move backward, A to close the door, and S to open the door. For the stepper motor, we just need to adjust the amount of the time we want to repeat the turning steps to get the desired angle for opening and closing the door.
ESLOs:
- Strategic Learners
- Innovative Thinker
- Leader of the future
