• 1
    Video
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    The Robot Electronics

    I began by assembling the 2WD MiniQ chassis kit from DFRobot. I slid the wheels onto the motor shafts, then inserted them into brackets and attached them to the chassis. Finally, I added the metal supports.

    Now it was time to build the main board. The L293d motor driver got soldered in place, along with wires running to the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins. Next, I soldered a connector for the battery, as that will provide the main power. After the power source was added, I installed a 5V regulator.

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    Setting Up the Pi

    DFRobot reached out to me and sent their Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Camera Module. So after I opened up the boxes I got right to work by setting up the SD card. First I went to the Raspberry Pi Downloads page and downloaded the most recent version of Raspbian. I then extracted the file and put it into a convenient directory. You can't just copy/paste a .img file to an SD card, you have to "burn it" onto the card. You can download a burning utility like Etcher.io to easily transfer the OS image. After the .img file was on my SD card I inserted it into the Raspberry Pi and gave it power. After about 50 seconds I unplugged the cord and removed the SD card. Next I put the SD card back into my PC and went to the "boot" directory. I opened up notepad and saved it as a blank file named "ssh" with NO extension. There was also a file I added called "wpa_supplicant.conf" and put this text into it:

    network={     ssid=<"SSID">     psk=<"PASSWD">
}

    Then I saved and ejected the card and put it back into the Raspberry Pi 3. This should now allow for the usage of SSH and connecting to WiFi.