Arduino Project(New) DIY Boat (Drone)

Objective: Create a DIY Boat (such as a helicopter, plane, rover) using the Arduino Uno.
Partner: Juan Torres
Duration: 6 days

Engineering and Design Class Update: It has been 4 weeks in EDC and the class has been really fun to work in. Around Week 2, my class received these programming boards called Arduino and more specifically, Arduino Uno Starter Kits (See July 11, 2014, "Arduino Project" blog post). We tinkered with them in groups of 2 or 3 and made projects from the Project Book included in the Arduino Uno Starter Kit such as the Love-O-Meter and the Keyboard instrument. On Week 3, the scholars got new partners and were assigned to make or plan out an original Arduino project for our final project for Engineering and Design. The brainstorming process for most of the scholars was difficult and some groups had trouble adjusting to each other. Eventually, the groups were able to brainstorm their ideas and are on their way to planning out their designs.

Brainstorming Experience: My partner and I took about three days to think about a project for Engineering and Design class. It was difficult to find an original, unique, and useful project online and we were limited by our little knowledge of coding and limited supplies. However, we were then told that our project only needed to be at least an idea for the real project. After a lot of collaborating with my partner on many different ideas, we wanted something that required sensors and was interactive. At first, we decided to make a UAV drone but then saw that it was too complicated. In the end, we decided on a DIY boat with the instructions on Instructables.com because we had most of the materials for the boat and was the least we could do to build a type of UAV drone. We also want to add on to the boat by adding a camera capable of recording videos and taking pictures.


How is this useful?
A DIY boat is capable of traveling across water and reacting to the environment around it with sensors.

Here are example pictures of the finished product:




Materials: 

• Tape
• Hot glue + glue gun (silicon optional)
• Two small DC motors
• Two water bottles
• Wires (Connecting Wires + Thin clear wires)
• Two small propellors
• Arduino Uno + USB cable + computer
• Wire strippers
• A plastic box 
• A 9V battery + a connector
• A power diode (like 1n4004)
• Resistors
• Scissors
• A soldering iron + solder
• A MOSFET transistor or TIP 120
• 2 switches + 2 photocells
• Ping Ultrasonic Rangefinder by Parallax 

These were our main materials (most of them):

Procedures:

1. Cut out holes into water bottle caps for the motor shaft. Use hot glue to secure the motor shaft into the hole 
   
2. Cut out slits into the water bottles for the motor wires to connect to the Arduino board
3. Tape bottles together with two-three strips of tape
4. Put caps onto bottles and put the wires from the Arduino circuit through the bottle
5. Make the electronic housing using the plastic box by putting it on top of the bottle raft made earlier and gluing it onto there.
6. Build the circuit for the motors using the Arduino board.
   

   

   This circuit requires a 9 volt battery, a DC motor with wires soldered on to it, a MOSFET
   Transistor, wires, a power diode, a breadboard, and the Arduino Board.
   
   
   
   

   Mount Ultrasonic Rangefinder onto the electronic house and photocells on the sides of the bottle raft. (Note: For our project, we wanted to mount a camera onto our electronic house as well near the Rangefinder but we do not know the code for its function nor the circuit for it)

   Build the circuits for the sensors and photocells. Note: You may need 2-3 more Arduino circuits for these circuits. Sorry for the inconvenience. This was how unclear the instructions were.

   Download the Code onto the Arduino boards using the Arduino Program. Find the codes for the circuits here, corresponding to its function on the circuits: https://github.com/gabriella/boat-

   Make sure all parts are assembled on, water proof boat, and test it.

   Have fun with your new boat drone! (If you made it correctly or somehow got most of the materials and the codes.)

Challenges: One of the challenges is that we have a limited amount of supplies such as a 9V battery, sensors, etc. Supplies cost money so they can expensive. Another challenge is that the instructions that we are following in order to make the boat are unclear in thing such as the number of materials needed, how to build certain thing such as circuits, and how all the parts should be put together. Our boat apparently needs three Arduinos to make it work which we cannot afford. We also do not know how to write our own codes so we were limited by how much our project could do.

Assistance: Our teachers, Mr. Pallone and Ms. Parker, helped us with the project by providing us with more supplies here in this picture.

They also provided tools for us to construct our bottle such as a soldering iron and a drill for us to drill holes into our water bottles and solder and wires.