Making it all work!

Ok sparky, you've got an idea, but how the hell do you get it off the ground? Well you have most definately come to the right place my friend. Now you will journey into the magical land of electronic speed control, pneumatic actuators, and electric motors. Sit back and relax.

Basic Wiring
Ok, now we need to figure out how to run the whole shebang from remote. Sure it's easy to control stuff if you have a big layout of switches and dials, but it's a whole new ballgame when you're 50 feet away in the battlebox so how does it all work? What you're gonna need is a lot of wiring and a fair amount of patience. Now pay attention.

For a basic robot with 2 wheels and a passive weapon (wedge, spike, or similar) you will need at LEAST the following:
-base
-speed controller(s)
-batteries
-Radio and receiver
-Speed Reduction
-Wheels
-Killswitch
-Distribution block & wire

For the sake of simplicity, do the mechanical stuff such as the speed reduction and motor mounts by yourself and the base can just be a 1/8 inch sheet of steel, titanium, or aluminum. Try to shy away from Lexan or Hardwoods for this part as the main purpose of this is to protect your bot from the killsaws. A distribution block is usually just a 1/4 inch thick piece of copper, aluminum or brass that you plug the main juice into and the loads (drive motors, solenoids, weapon motors) into as well. You can figure this out, I know you can! But the wiring gets tricky. In Strange Brew we use two Victor883s available from IFI Robotics for speed control, one for each motor and we used the Futaba 6xas from Tower Hobbies as our radio. What a speed control does is take the signal from your receiver cable and use it to regulate the amount of juice it gives to the motors. The wiring goes like this:
Batteries + to switch
Switch + to Distribution block
Batteries - distribution block
Distribution block + to speed controllers
Distribution block - to speed controllers
Radio Receiver to speed controllers
Speed Controllers to Motors

or...


1. Battery
2. Killswitch
3. Distribution block
4. Radio receiver
5. Speed controllers
6. Motors.

Now that's not too bad, is it? If all goes well you should be able to control your motors via your remote. This is called Tank Steering because the robot steers via the different speeds of the motors on either side. On the futaba 6xas the right stick Y axis is channel 1, X is channel 2, left stick Y is channel 3 and X is channel 4. We hooked the left side Speed Controller into channel 3 and the right side into channel 1. You can also use channels 1 and 2 with what's called Aeleron Mixing so that you can use one stick to control the robot, though I feel two sticks gives better control.

So you've got a mobile platform, but how do you hook up your weapon of mass destruction to your control scheme? Well boys and girls, it all comes down to a couple things known as relays, solenoids, and contactors. By definition, a relay takes a small amount of something and uses it to release a large amount of something, kind of like when you push the gas pedal on a car you can make a 4000 pound chunk of steel move. A solenoid is an electrical device that uses some electricity to create an electromagnet and move a metal rod back and forth which can trigger all kinds of neat stuff. A solenoid can be used to push two pieces of copper together and make an electrical connection (this is called a "contactor") or to actuate a pneumatic valve (a "solenoid valve"). The wiring on either one is pretty much the same: You run your juice through your relay/solenoid/whatever and turn it on and off with a Team Delta d-switch. Here is what the wiring looks like for both a pneumatic solenoid and an electrical contactor:



1. Battery
2. Radio receiver
3. Team Delta d-switch
4. Contactor
5. Weapon motor
6. Solenoid valve

most contactors have two light lugs and two heavy lugs. These are the easiest to wire up. The two light lugs go to the positive and negative of your battery and in line with the positive terminal is your switch. The motor connects to your battery's positive and negative with the contactor in line with the positive terminal. When you flip the switch of the channel on the team delta d-switch, it allows the solenoid to contact two pieces of copper inside the solenoid, which completes the circuit to power your motor. A similar setup is in the solenoid valve. The team delta switch connects the circuit that causes the solenoid to trip the valve and redirect your gas. Good stuff!