Make the TINIEST Line Follower Robot without a Microcontroller!

in this video you'll learn how to make a tiny line follower robot that operates without an Arduino or any form of microcontroller that fits in the palm of your hand and follows different size lines with crazy speed for its size you can make this tiny robot with parts costing you little to nothing as most of the components used to make it can be found in old and broken appliances such as in Old Nokia phones for the motors to drive your robot old power inverters which contain the robot's comparator circuit even buttons for its wheels found in your Grandma's sewing kit and most other parts required for it are probably lying around your home without you even knowing it but for convenience you can purchase all of the components and parts through my affiliate links listed with names in the description below and out of these parts we'll start with a small perforated PCB board and cut a 42x 20 mm piece for our line followers chassis which will help hold everything together additionally let's make holes for both the Corless Motors and front Caster wheel these four holes are made perfectly for a couple of zip ties to go through which strap the motors to the Bottom now let's get straight into inserting the electronic components which will mostly do the robots functional side of things starting with the LM 358 comparator 8 Pin dual inline socket which will drop in right in the middle of the board followed by the 100 microfarad capacitors a couple of 1 kiloohm resistors for the light dependent resistors two 20 kiloohm resistors of a fixed value instead of trimming potentiometers two more resistors of 10 ohms each through which the transistors are controlled and the P&P transistors themselves for controlling the motors a micro slide switch for powering the robot on and off a couple of 3mm LEDs for direction indication and some short jumper wires for bridging connections that would interfere with only soldering mentioning soldering before we do so let's make it go a lot quicker by bending the pins according to how the components must connect in the diagram by the way you can find the diagram Linked In the description below with all the pins bent we can begin soldering these Connections in place with the help of the pins as guidelines now that all the components which protrude the top side of the board are connected let's proceed with adding the remaining components like the two photo resistors for line detection at the bottom we'll also add these 51 ohm resistors below the photo resistors that individually limit current to the infrared LEDs speaking of which these IR LEDs can be found in old TV remotes if you do not already have them at your disposal now that they're connected with the rest of the circuit the main part of what makes the robot work is already complete we can now get hold of the battery holder for 3vt coin cells which can be found in computer motherboards we'll secure this holder with a bit of cloth fabric tape in between to avoid short circuits followed by soldering the positive and negative terminals to their corresponding ends on the board with a used up ballpoint pen tube will'll pinch the ballpoint tip and use that as the robot's front Caster wheel for best rolling performance I would choose one that's as dry as possible which can still roll very well once soldered into the hole at the front it should sit quite firmly next let's take the Dual opamp comparator IC also known as the robots decision-making chip and insert it into its socket filing the battery's positive Terminal A little will allow for the motors to be seated at the rear and not to have the terminal in the way we'll cut these small pieces of perf board and solder them to the main board so that the Corless Motors are elevated tying on the zip ties mounting Motors is made super straightforward and firm if there's any room left with the battery and all that solder the motor wires after mounting them or even better connect them prior to installing the motors themselves to correct a little mistake of mine here when it comes to connecting the remaining of the two motor wires to ground one should be negative and the other positive wired to the nearest ground now the overall circuit for the robot is complete now before we dive straight into powering or giving our robot a set of wheels I want to share something exciting with you you know as a maker Community we all about the handson learning pushing the boundaries with our projects just like making this the tiniest possible line following robot and speaking of which I recently stumbled upon something very cool brought to you by Circuit mess with their awesome DIY stem kits what I love about circuit mess is their focus on making educational Electronics kits accessible for everyone whether you're 12 or 50 a season maker or just starting out with their quarterly subscription plans you get to enjoy a stem kit box delivered to your door every 3 months that will help you learn Electronics coding Ai and cyber security all Hands-On while building cool gadgets with those skills like gaming consoles walkie-talkies synthesizers and even AI robots now if you know me I'm all for the Hands-On learning experience and circuit mess with their kits aligns perfectly with that philosophy ophy if you're interested in exploring these kits to add an extra layer of fun and learning in your free time check the link in the description below and apply code Max 10 at checkout for 10% off all circuit mess orders now let's get back to working on our little electronic Wonder to power the robot will'll insert one of those 3vt coin cell batteries into the holder and either one of the robot's Motors should be going at full speed one thing to note is that infrared LEDs are not the only diodes that can be used to emit enough light for the sensors another couple of red LEDs will also do the trick another thing I almost left out to avoid confusion is this important bridging connection over here which allows power from the battery to go to the chip for the robot's Wheels we'll be using these two shirt buttons to make the necessary holes we'll begin with making sort of a light center punch in the middle of each button with a soldering iron and continue making the holes with A5 mm screwdriver tip both Wheels should slide on with a tight fit Additionally you may want to also carefully superglue them onto the shafts without dripping glue into the motors themselves if your line follower does not seem to have its pen Caster wheel allowing it to roll too well then only if it's way too seized May some oil help the robot roll better another tip may be to replace the current ballpoint tip for one that has a larger ball after a few attempts at getting my line follower going the battery just didn't seem to supply enough power to the ungeared motors so instead of the 3vt coin cell using a rechargeable battery like a 4.2 volt Lithium Polymer cell will definitely make it move if all else already works on the robot to make the robot's Wheels grip a lot better on a smooth surface a bit of heat shrink wrap tube around the buttons will do the trick as if adding tires for charging we'll use one of these onell lithium charger boards which will connect to the robot through its new two- pin header added at the very back connecting directly to the battery through prepared wires soldered below this now makes the robot complete so when the line follower robot runs along the line it's detecting the difference between what's light and dark with its sensors on the front which with its feedback loop corrects the robot to stay on track by activating the motor corresponding to the side that's going off the line if your robot still acts as if it's been supercharged and refuses to stay on track means the voltage to the motors is way too high therefore I recommend you to use geared motors for it to go at a steady speed and the voltage won't be the case but since we don't have such Motors readily available at this size the best thing we can do is add one or more shock key diodes to each motor so the voltage is cut down by around half a volt with each subsequent diode in my case my robot needed three for each motor the line follower robot works so much better with those adjustments also if you like the video tutorial so far and want to learn the intricacies behind how this robot works then you'd enjoy reading my written tutorial about the project on the elector Labs project platform on the platform you can also read about the hundreds of other amazing Electronics projects made by other fellow makers in the community check the link in the description below and getting back to seeing the line follower robot in action I went ahead and taped a whole line course on the floor with electrical tape for the robot to follow turned out the line follower kept going off course every second turn it made earlier I even made a smaller scale line course for the robot which had turned it still couldn't make due to not having the geared Motors that would allow it to make more precise slow turns but overall the robot can in fact do the necessary line following with any turn at a slower speed which got me thinking to make straighter lines for it to follow like this wavy track in the middle of my living room floor and a straight line which it followed perfectly every time the robot works pretty well following curved lines like the circle that don't contain sharp or sudden turns once again if you were to make this robot with geared Motors it may go slower but it would then definitely follow any line with precision and without driving off track got if you enjoyed seeing this tiny robot come to life let me know in the comments if you'd like me to make a series of videos on these kind of PCB robots with that said now it's your turn to see if you can make the tiniest line following robot with the instructions and resources you've just been given but wait if you're really enjoying this project Series so far then you'd really enjoy watching a previous video where I show you how to successfully convert an ordinary paper airplane into one that is remotely controlled and has an fpd camera thanks for watching this video and I'll see you there

Channel: Max Imagination

Views: 231,419

Keywords: Line follower robot, Fast Line Follower Robot, DIY, Arduino line follower, No microcontroller, no code, line follower circuit, simple, cheap, No Arduino, DIY robot project, Two-wheeled robot, Precise line tracking, Budget, Miniature robotics, Mini robot, Line-following mechanism, High Precision Line-follower, Line-following experiment, Line-following setup, Line-following speed, Line-following innovation, Electronics, Robotics tutorial, tiniest line follower robot

Id: zZmvL0TkllI

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2024