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eLeDe edited this page Oct 13, 2018 · 4 revisions

This is the list of modules that we have used for version 1 of the car hardware (the active so far):

Processing power

  • Blue Pill board
    • https://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Blue_Pill
    • Powerful ARM board that manages all our sensors and motor speeds as well as driving algorithms and telemetry.
    • Very cheap and easy to find.
    • There is a similar board called "Black Pill" that is the same board but for some pins and, of course, the color. You could use that board for our car but read how to compile for it in the repo's README.md.
    • We use a FTDI board to program the chip using the serial port.

Sensors

  • QTR-8A Reflectance Sensor Array
  • Pololu's Magnetic Encoder Pair Kit for Micro Metal Gearmotors, 12 CPR, 2.7-18V (HPCB compatible)
  • Voltaje divider for Battery level measurement
    • We use a pair of resistors to step down the battery voltaje (8.4 to 6.4 Volts) to something readable from a Blue Pill's ADC (3.3 - 0 Volts). We use 1x 47 and 1x 20 ohms resistors.
    • Note that not all resistors are made equal. You have to tune the software thresholds to match the low level voltage that your pair of resistors give to you.

Actuators

  • Pololu's 10:1 Micro Metal Gearmotor HP 6V with Extended Motor Shaft
  • Passive Buzzer Module
    • We use a typical small PCB with a buzzer and a regulator to play beautiful songs and give some feedback.

Wheels

  • Pololu Wheel 32×7mm Pair
    • https://www.pololu.com/product/1087
    • Our car has only 2 wheels, so one kit is enough.
    • Maybe not the best choice for a real race, but endure a lot and are far enough to test the software and chassis.

Power

  • 7.4V 450mAh 60C 2S Lipo Battery
    • These batteries are small enough gives us enough power for 15-20 minutes of line following and are rechargeable.
  • TB6612FNG based Motor Driver
    • This device manages the power that reaches the motors.
    • We need 1, as it can control 2 motors.
  • Pololu 9V Step-Up Voltage Regulator U3V12F9
    • https://www.pololu.com/product/2116
    • We need 1.
    • You could drive your car without this board, just connect the batteries to the motor drivers. This device makes sure that your motors have always the same voltage, making the car's behavior more stable between laps.
  • LM2596 based Ajustable Step Down
    • You can find it in a number of different cheap boards.
    • We need this board to adjust out batteries voltaje to 3.3 V, something that doesn't burn our MCU, communication board and sensors.
  • Capacitors
    • We need some capacitors to avoid current peaks. More concrete we use:
      • 2x 2pF ceramic capacitors to protect the motors.
      • 1x 47mF 16V electrolytic capacitor to protect the board from the battery voltaje peaks.

Communications

Here we use yet a HC-05 or a ESP8266 based device, depending on if we want access via BLuetooth or WiFi. These devices have to be already configured to match with the serial port configuration of the Blue Pill.

Other

  • Cables, headers
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