“This mobile robot with on-board pan & tilt camera can be controlled remotely from a host PC without the need to follow it.
This project demonstrates how to use CASP to make a simple WiFi remote controlled 4 wheeled mobile robot that has an on-board WiFi camera mounted on a servos powered pan & tilt assembly. It is manually controlled by the user from host PC through WiFi. Because of the live video from the the on-board camera, the rover need not be in line of sight from the user.
This project also uses a custom block (where the source code is available to the user) in the native model. It generates required control signals when user presses certain keys for controlling the movements of the robot. User can take a look at the configuration and source code of the block and learn how to integrate the block in a CASP model along with other blocks.
Hardware Development
Four DC motors are fitted to a suitable metal base frame along with the wheels. Pan & tilt assembly (fitted with two micro servos) is mounted at suitable location of the base frame (preferably towards rare end of the robot base frame). A 12V battery is mounted below the base frame. Required electronic modules are suitably placed on the base frame and are connected as per the connection diagram. Typical arrangement is shown in below figure.
The electronics part consists of Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect micro-controller board used as the main controller on the robot that communicates with the host PC through on-board WiFi. The micro-controller generates required PWM signals to control the four wheels through suitable driver circuit. It also controls two servo motors of the camera pan & tilt assembly.
An ESP32 Camera module is mounted on the pan & tilt assembly for capturing live video and stream to the host PC.
Flash light present on the ESP32-CAM module is controlled manually from the host PC via the Arduino Nano RP2040 micro-controller during low light conditions.
A 6V to 12V battery is used to power the entire circuitry on the robot. A 6V/12V to 5V DC step down converter is used to provide required 5V supply to power the micro-controller, servos and ESP32 camera module.”