So, instead, I've built myself a robot wheelbarrow! Much more practical... err... ok, so maybe not too practical, but awesome? Yes.
I'm going to test it out this weekend on a bunch of firewood, but the wheel chair is designed to carry the larger boned variety of human beings, so it should be able to carry a pile of old dead logs no problem.
In addition to turning the chair into a wheel barrow, I added two key components:
- Motorized Lift to provide dumping mechanism
- Radio Controlled instead of Wifi Controlled
The motorized lift allows me to dump the robots load with no effort on my part. Right now its just a switch duct taped onto the side of the robot, but I have 'big plans' to hook it into the radio controller... when i get time... which is rare.
The radio controller instead of wifi just makes sense. Previously, I had to Power on a router on the chair, connected to its own battery (through an inverter), and then power on my laptop, start a java application, before I could even drive the chair.
With the radio controller, I just power on the chair, and flip on the control box on the chair. Done. The radio is powered off of the arduino's 5V supply, so it didn't even need anything special for power.
I will be selling these for around $2500.00 each (j/k). If you want to purchase one of the worlds most expensive, Yet Practical!, wheelbarrows, just let me know.
