Proud of my Mule

 Today's song is: Proud Mary ... Tina Turner

I am proud of my RC controlled mule. Mainly because I built it from scratch with my own drive train and steering mechanism. Also because it is very fast. It is driven by 2 lego L motors geared up running on a NiMH 9.6 volt battery back. However, it can be improved.

I am using a Raspberry PI to control it which is okay, but I use an AdaFruit Crickit board to drive the motors and it is overkill for what I need and has one inherent problem that is, it can only drive motors up to 5 volts dc. That means I then add on another Cytron motor board to drive the 9 volt Lego motors. I also have an issue with the 9.6 volt battery pack as I can't tell how much battery is left. I could add a small volt/capacity meter but that means another small addition. I like to adhere to the KISS principle.

My plan is to keep the Raspberry computer, but perhaps downgrade it to a Raspberry PI Zero W from the Model 3B+. Why, because it is cheaper, and does the job, as well as being half the size.  I am then going to add a WaveShare Motorboard that sits ontop of the PI zero and is the same size, and can drive the Lego motors at 9 volts and potentially up to 12 volts (more on that later). The more volts, the faster you go.

The final new addtion will be a 12/5 volt USB Battery Pack. Most of the USB battery packs only pump out 5 volts to charge phones. The one I found by TalentCell has two outs, one at 5 volts and one at 12 volts. I could (undecided), run the PI Zero off the 5 volts and the motor board off the 12 volts. Best of all, it has 5 leds that show the status of the battery so I know when to recharge it.

All of the above makes everything much smaller and simpler. I should be able to get it all hooked up in a week as the parts come in, unless I fry something.

Meanwhile in Covid land we are surviving and today is a snow day and Jaidan is at home and working hard om Math and Reading. Thavorn is drying pork to use with this week's meals. Thai, her daughter has managed to get herself kicked out of school in Phang Na for truancy. Not sure, what will become of her, but probably nothing good.

Some more picks of the existing mule.

TTYL