Mars Rover

Description

It all started when I seen a unique green dome on "Electronic Goldmine". (a surplus electronics retailer) Find link below. I ordered two, not knowing what to do with them. I also ordered a 4" x 4" surprise box* can't wait for that also. Anyways I thought, well it looks very alien, so much so I thought maybe I can make a toy robot of some kind for my 3 year old Cordelia. https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G15340

Details

I ended up sketching out a mars truck/rover and went to duplicate it on Autodesk Fusion 360. There is more to change with the design so I'm not going to put up the .STL/STEP files until I test the design. So far it features the following.

Current feature list:

Articulating chassis
RC controlled
Headlights
6x powered wheels
Arduino Nano powered
Sabertooth motor control
On-board charge circuit
Current shutoff protection via Arduino
2x Li-Ion 18750 cells

Project Logs

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From the depths
Apollo Timbers • 10/30/2024 at 17:19 • 0 comments

Hello,

My apologies, I hate when people also post just designs with no hardware. However fear not I have finally got the right motors and event to get this rover made. I'm part of the St. Louis Robotics Club and there is a First Friday @ the Science Center coming up this Friday. (the theme is "The Martian") I was able to get the rover going in the last two weeks. So far i have printed everything and assembled the rolling chassis. I have also spent time on the control system which for more audience/kid interaction I made it RC, tank steerable with front facing LED lights.

This will be 6 wheel drive and is intended to go in a lunar regolith test bed.

I was able to test the RC side electronics, I now need to work on the battery/switch and DC-DC convertor.

Here is a current progress picture of the rover.
Design Checkpoint
Apollo Timbers • 12/12/2018 at 20:19 • 0 comments

I have worked a lot with the overall design in CAD, (Autodesk Fusion 360). Since the motors are rather expensive at ~17 bucks a pop this will not be a cheap project. To that end, I decided I might as well put some sealed ball bearings in at the articulation point. Also no self respecting rover is without environmental sensors so I will load it up with Temperature/Barometric pressure with a BMP180 and a lux sensor. I might throw in a small OLED to display the data. This is adding up a bit so I will be looking into a nice custom PCB that I can solder to. Might just have to relabel this as a actual rover ready for the moon or mars lol.
Next Steps:
The next step is to start printing out the chassis parts and see if things are fitting in the real world.
The newest design is below. Let me know what you guys think.
Forever waiting on the dome...
Enjoy!
Apollo