The Marshall car

INDEX Introduction The team What is it Arduino General Handling Manual handling Automatic Handling Sensors

A short introduction… The “Marshall” car works in the context of the “Comenius Project”, a cultural exchange of two schools the italian “International Edoardo Agnelli Institute” and the “Kaunas Vyturis Catholic Secondary School”

Let’s start: what is it? The Marshall Plan consist of a four wheels car, runned by four DC motors followed each one by a personal gear-motor controlled by a Motor shield on an Arduino Mega2560 Board. The car has two ways of movement, manual and automatic. Through several sensors it could earn a lot of information, like temperature, position, humidity and many more. -A DC-Motor-

The car’s brain The program that enable the car to the actions for what it was created is contained and runned up by an Arduino MEGA2560. This electronic board is part of the Arduino family, a series of electronic board, completely open-source. -Arduino- The MEGA2560 is one of the most big Arduino available. It presents 54 digital IN/OUT pins, 16 analog IN/OUT pins and 4 serial connections. -An Arduino MEGA-

The car’s brain We also used two other different Arduino boards: an ArduinoNANO and an Arduino Motor Shield. -Arduino- The ArduinoNANO is a little board that works with a mini USB cable. It has 16 digital IN/OUT pins and 8 analog IN/OUT pins. There is only one serial connection. An Arduino Motor Shield is a special board that enable an Arduino board to work with a maximum of 4 DC-Motors. -An ArduinoNANO- -An Arduino Motor Shield-

General handling The robot is controllable in three different ways, two manual and one automatic. Here we are going to analyze them.

Manual handling We have two types of manual handling. Computer control, that is possible through the use of special devices called APC220. Mobile application control, that is possible trough the use of a bluethooth sensor and an Android mobile app.

PC program In the first way we have a program on our PC that enable us to control our car. The program is written by Visual Basic, a free programming software. The software use the WASD controls, a usually present in cars games. Through two APC220, USB components that enable the wireless communication between two devices.

Manual handling The car could be controlled by bluetooth using an android mobile device with a special application on. The app was developed with the help of our teacher Andrea Bottin and the technicians of his Biomedical Laboratory, situated in our school. He produces special electromedical applications for University, Industrial Institutes and many more clients. -Mobile application-

The application is programmed by AndroidStudio through the help of Davide Torchia, a technician of our teacher Andrea Bottin. AndroidStudio is a free Android software, useful for programming and testing app. Manual handling

-Mobile application- In the first window is to select the bluethooth device which the user would use. There will be a list of all devices available; the bluethooth sensor are denominated like “HC-06” followed by a personal code of each module. However the app will be shows all bluethooth devices that are different from the HC-06 modules. Manual handling

-Mobile application- In the second window is the graphic interface that enable the uset to control the Marshall car. There are 8 types of directions. The standard four that are: forward, backward, right and left. The car can also go backward right and left. The last two movements are CW(Clockwise rotation of 360°) and CCW(CounterCW rotation of 360°). Manual handling

Automatic Handling As we said the car can move itself without an external control, like the app or the computer program that we previously saw. This is possible through two ultrasonic sensors, called “HC-SR04”, place in the top and in the bottom of the car. When one of the sensor relieve an obstacle it send a signal to the Arduino Board and the car change its direction.

Sensors The Marshall car can acquire several data from environment through its sensor, like temperature, light, position and humidity. Here the list of sensors used: LM335, a resistance thermometer.LM335 GY-GPS6MV2, a GPS module.GY-GPS6MV2 GL5528, a photoresistor.GL5528 DHT11, a humidity sensor.DHT11

Sensors -LM335- An LM335 is a temperature sensor. It’s composed by three pins, the one in the middle to both the analog signal and the 5V power. The one to the right is connected to the GND, the last is not connected anything.

Sensors -GYGPS6MV2- The GY-GPS6MV2 is a GPS sensor that can acquire GPS coordination, height from the sea, speed of the car, distance from a place and more things. It has 4 pins, two for the alimentation and the last two for the serial connection.

Sensors The GL5528 is a photoresistance useful to measure the amount of lux in the environment where the car is working. It has only two pins, one connected to the 5V and the other one both to the GND and an analog pin. GL5528

Sensors The DHT11 is a sensor useful to measure the humidity. Over the two alimentation pins, there is one connected to a digital input. -DHT11-

Conclusions The final result looks like what we excepted while planning the robot. Creating it was a really satisfactory for us but also really difficult. Was really complicated configure the serial connection between computer and Marshall car. Also take long time planning the car movements and writing the whole program. To conclude for us was great creating something that reflect what we are learning in school and also working with our Lithuanian friends!