Hi folks,
after having assembled the car it was now time to move on. The goal is to have a car that drives, not a car that collects dust. The last week I have been coding to get a nice set of functions to get the my car moving. Not so long ago I already developed a piece of code to let a DC motor turn a wheel. That experience I integrated in the current developments. I had a strong limitation and that was the current I needed for my Raspberry Pi. It was clear I needed a powerbank. After some investigation I finally decided to order the XB101 Xtorm Power Bank Trip 9000. I was a little worried about the 2.5 A current output from the powerbank knowing the Raspberry Pi needs maximum 2A. Finally after a lot of googling came on a forum where somebody said that the Raspberry Pi only takes the amount current that it needs. Another thing I was worried about was the 5V output. I know the Raspberry Pi needs 5V but I was wondering what in case the powerbank was not able to give the full 5V and due to some loss (USB cable) only able to give 4.8V for example. So I was looking for a powerbank with an output of 5.25V but didn’t find any. Anyway I found some tests where the output was also 5V and did not gave any issues for the Raspberry Pi. After too much time of investigating and looking for information I finally ordered the powerbank yesterday evening. And this morning it was already delivered. My god what a great service. I really hate running around in big stores looking for what I need. I really prefer the internet. It so much easier. Now coming back on my developments. I am now able to let the car move forward and backward by controlling 2 DC motors. Let’s say 2-wheel drive. Next step is making it able to turn. There I will have to do some magic controlling the 2 DC motors to get this done. Still thinking about the algorithm. I am seeing a couple of possibilities but I have to test it first.
Before I forget. I had to remove the cobbler and the breadboard because they were a real pain to get everything wired and placed on the car which was a big problem because the breadboard and cobbler took some place and were limiting me in my work.
About the source-code. I will only publish once I have something that is presentable. If you need the source about my current experiments earlier, please let me know and I can send it.
Jan
Raspberry Pi Controlled Car