How To Robot No.1 -- Chassis, Motors, and Power Wiring

This is video number one of my "How To Robot" series, lowering the bar of entry as much as I can to make this magical (at least to me) hobby accessible to as many as possible. This is where we start, and we will build upward from here.

[BobSimpkin]

Very good Sir, I enjoyed it. Simple and straight forward directions with a little tongue in cheek light heartedness. I'll be back for the next part.

[kaylat.]

Love how accessible you're making this!

[JasonPurkiss]

Great work, finally a 3d printing free robot :) love the lolly pop sticks

[slinco]

Excellent tutorial style. Keep it going - I'll be following along :)

[CorenTheBrave]

Very good and straight forward how-to on building robots!

You've done a great job on making sure it's not intimidating for a complete beginner, and I like that you've got out of your way to use parts that are easy to get most places.

[JulianMakes]

love this video. great presentation, and looking forward to the rest :) subbed.

[RoboticsDIY]

Nice video tutorial and the idea for this series. I used to make robot building workshops for pupils and students back in Latvia.
There probably isn't one correct way of getting balance between keeping it interesting and not too overwhelming to introduce kids to robotics and starters in general... and not making a quick tik tok asmr video where some dude in India made an "efficient 3 phase inverter out of only 5 parts". But its not easy to get it all balanced.
One side of me would want to give as much detail and cautions about possible hiccups as possible.
Other side - "Keep It Simple Stupid".
I see plenty of much shorter videos, some with voice, some without where you just jam couple of DIY blocks from China together. And then I have seen plenty of frustrated people why their creation doesn't work.
Keep up the good work. Cherrs

[redleiin]

HI JOE
im from brazil and estou ansioso pra aprender com você ☝

[jRsqILVOY]

I just built a 4WD robot with a very similar kit a few weeks ago. Literally the same motors, motor controller and battery holders, etc. - I used an ESP32 board though (although the small one I had didn't have 5V out which was a hassle) - but I love being able to write Rust on it so I can share the code between the controller, camera board, client, etc.

[wobiwo]

fantastic as always! Don't underestimate the act of cleaning one's desk, if partly! It takes monumental effort XD.
Quick question: why did you link both ground wires of the battery together? I swear, every time I feel like I'm getting a good handle on an Arduino project or something and everything is going fine and dandy, some weird electrical circuit issue pops up and stalls the whole thing (like floating signals, for example.).
Thank you for your effort and for sharing!!

[pihighrockets]

I have an electronics shop ultrasonic wall dodging robot kit which I have adapted several times (the first to add wifi remote control and then to make it self balance upright on 2 wheels). It uses a 6 AA battery pack - which is enough to power 2 DC motors and an Arduino Uno (the old one - not sure if it makes a difference - still 5V). Even rechargeables just work OK. Power definitely is a pain - the 16850 lithium batteries are good too. Building a chasis is also tricky. This is where having a 3d printer would really help (I don't have one - but a few people at work do).

[openhere]

Great vid, I built that Elegoo kit a while back and now it won't run even though the power lights and sensors react (I'm re recharging the batteries.). Now I have time, and I'm looking to move forward and knowing what I'm doing instead of plugging things in and copy paste code. So I'm looking forward to your vids.

[newchinedu]

Will you end up using machine learning in this series?
Great vid by the way, a lot of people just leave out important details from what i have noticed.

[HybridRobotix]

You should get an Uno R4. You can drop it into your robot with no issues. The R4 is a better Arduino board.

[tiagotiagot]

Do you know any good robot vacuums with decent sets of sensors and such, that can have it's proprietary main-board replaced by a RasPi and/or Arduino or something of the sort, allowing for full access to all the peripherals and such with a fully customizable brain, without having to worry about the factory backdoors those vacuums often come with?

[minhadona]

@joethieman when you get more famous dont forget the first ones standing here 🤝🏻 😂 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷