Make a Mini Toy Car With Arduino

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Every boy have the dream to make a car. Days ago I made a Never Fall Beetle, it’s very funny and so many people said the like it. Here it will make another toy car, which is much smaller and, it’s programmable.

I am not going to use Shield Bot again, I will cut the car body with wooden board. And today I will just make a basic version, that means if you want you make a full and cool car, you need to make something yourself.

There is 3 sensor include:

• Digital compass to detect the direction
• IR distance sensor to detect black line
• Ultrasonic sensor to detect the edge of desk, to avoid falling

I will improve the code and outline when I get time.

Step 1: Prepare the Stuff

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The stuff is in 3 parts, electronic modules, the wooden board and others.

Electronic modules:

• Grove Joint

Grove – Joint is a very small Arduino compatible board, the 2 on-board Grove ports is enough for so many application, and it’s only 30x15mm size.

• Grove – Digital Compass
• Grove – Ultrasonic Ranger
• Grove – Mini I2C Motor Driver
• Grove – Line Finder

Wooden and laser cutter.

• 3mm wooden board

3D Print a lampshade:

You can find a laser cutter easily if there’s a maker space near from you. I can say that every maker space has a laser cutter. If you can’t find the wooden board of a laser cutter, you can try the laser cutting service supply by Seeed.

Step 2: Cut the Base of the Car

You need a laser cutter and a 3mm wooden board here.

Just download the 2D file and cut it with a laser cutter.

You will find that there’s many parts, I will show you the usage of each part in the next steps.

In this part we just cut the board.

Step 3: Install the Motor

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We need some AB glue to connect the wooden and motor here.

First of all, connect the 3 smaller board together, and then tack the 3 boards to the body, you can find a square on it. It may need few minutes before it fastness. If you put something on the top, it will save you some times. Or you can go for eating something or go to the toilet in the time waiting.

Then you can put some AB glue on the gap, and then put the motor to it, also few minutes later, the motor is fixed fine.

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Step 4: Install the Electrical Modules

Here we need some M2 screws and nuts.

It is not a very hard step, more details please refer to the image.

Actually if you get the whole things before you, you will know where to put the modules :)

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Step 5: Solder a Cable to Motor

There are 2 jst2.0 connector on the motor driver module, each to control a motor.

What we need to do is connect the motor to the jst2.0 connector.

If you have never try to make soldering, never mind, it’s as easy as you drive a car. Actually I just get my driving license days ago, hahaha.

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Step 6: Hardware Connecting

After the upper steps, we get a car. But each

modules is separated, we have to connect they together. And lucky that we don’t need to solder here. Just insert the Grove cables to each module.

The connection is:

• I2C port of Joint > I2C Hub
• I2C Hub > Grove – Digital Compass
• I2C Hub > Grove – Mini I2C Motor Driver
• D5 -> Ultrasonic
• D6 -> IR distance sensor

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Step 7: Software Work

Finally we got to the last step. The Car can’t run yet, but it’s very near from success.

I had said that Joint is compatible with Arduino, I guess you have use Arduino before, because this instructable is post on Arduino Plate. You have never heard about Arduino? Ok, you can learn about it when you have time.

About how to use Grove Joint, refer to the wiki.

Please download the code here, it’s just a simple code, you need to code if you need some complex function.