Arduino Part 7: The Test

A few weeks ago, I picked up the Arduino Uno that I've had for a while, and started thinking about what I should build with it. I decided on modifying an old toy rover that I had, and making it wirelessly drivable... but with 2 way audio and a camera feed. single-frame camera-broadcast.


Links:
Part 1: Initial Plan and Reverse-Engineering
Part 2: Preparing the Rover Chassis
Part 3: Motor Control
Part 4: Bluetooth!
Part 5: Mounting
Part 6: Batteries
Part 7: The Test

- Chassis: Check
- Motor Circuitry: Check
- Bluetooth Functionality: Check
- Android App: Check
- Arduino Mount: Check
- Power: Check
- Double Check: Check

Now what happens when I put it together and turn it on?

On May 18th, I put batteries into the compartments. I put the Arduino on the rover. I plugged all of the motors into the breadboard, with their uncomfortably long wires. I plugged in the positive power. I checked the circuitry twice for errors, and tried to think of any solder joints that might need to be changed.

My mom helped me record the first test.
Here are 4,249 pictures of it:

Success

Since then, I've stopped working on it... I still might set up an audio system. In theory, it won't be nearly as complicated as a camera system, requiring less bandwidth to work.

Speaking of cameras and bandwidth, an image-broadcasting system, unfortunately, isn't practical. Even at 480x360p, black and white (One byte per pixel), each image would be 1.4 Mb, or 172.8 kB. The Arduino Uno has only 2kB of SRAM... Way too little to store an image. Plus, even at a baud rate of 115,200, it would take 12 seconds to broadcast. In my calculations in part 4, I mistook 115,200 to be the number of bytes, rather than bits, per second, so I thought it would only take 2.66 seconds per frame (with 78% more pixels).

Here are the project's credits:

Myself:     Designer, builder, programmer
My mom:  Inspired me to do this project, and lets me explain problems to her
My dad:    Sponsor and design help