BalanceBot | Devpost

Inspiration

We had no idea what to make ahead of time and randomly decided to make a self balancing robot.

It calculates the angle that it is at and corrects it.

Arduino, Motors, batteries, self-designed circuit board.

Building H-Bridge, Finding the correct motors, calibrating PID.

Made it for $12, It works pretty well, Popsicle sticks and hot glue.

A lot about circuits, arduino, PID, self-balancing robots.

Buying correct motors so it works 100%, adding MYO armband control, adding ps3 control.

We all worked on "BalanceBot" together as a team. We faced many challenges, yet gained so much knowledge and experience. We came to HackISU open to any ideas and ready to learn. We were offered the idea of creating a self balancing robot and decided to tackle the task. We first started by creating the circuit with breadboards and later converted them to a PCB. After it was converted we ran into some serious issues. First, the motors didn't have enough torque. Second, the motors were sending voltage back into the circuit breaking the connection to the gyroscope. At this point, we were pretty stuck with the project, however, the amazing Rockwell Collins mentors John and Josh gave us the inspiration to continue on. They helped us get the correct motors and solve the "noise" issue with the gyroscope. Once these issues were solved, it was time to start programming. We wrote everything in C using the Arduino IDE and implemented a PID controller. After all this, the PID wasn't tuned to perfection, however, we had a working self balancing robot.

Justin Wheeler
Web developer, programmer, and full time student at Iowa State University
Gregory Steenhagen
Brad Stiff

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