Ultimate Raspbian

This is my first big project with Arduino. After so many doubts regarding which version to buy: 2 wheels, 4 wheels or even not touching anything related to Arduino at all, I finally chose the 4 wheel kit because the 2 wheel kit seemed ugly to me xD. I needed a few days to realize that the 4 wheel kit has almost everything to mount 2 robots with 2 wheels (just missing the idler wheel), so I think this is the best option with the future in mind.

This kit contains only basic car elements and a battery pack, but no electronic stuff at all:

• 4 plastic wheel with rubber
• 4 DC engines model 130, 3-6V and 70-250mA
• 4 plastic discs for the velocimeter (missing the led-photoresistor system to measure the light coming through the slots)
• 2 strips of 4 wires each to connect the engines
• 1 battery pack to group 1.5V batteries, 6V in total
• 2 methacrylate boards to sustain the components
• 8 clamping elements for the engines (2 for each engine)
• Screws, nuts and metalic spacers to secure all components

What interests me is to control the software of what I could think of, the electronic part is a mere formality (unpleasant for me) so I’m counting on two engineers: my father and cousing. I’ve electronic notions from my engineering degree and my father, but he’ll be the one who will prevent me from frying more components than I should.
This project is highly scalable: first of all achieving the car going forward with an acceptable speed. I could then add more features like turning and changing the direction. When all this basic stuff will work, it would be interesting to also dig deep into:

• Adjusting the basic control. Calibrate wheels so all of them run at the same speed by applying different voltage to each one, since real life is not as perfect as the designs and there will be frictions and different weight loads between wheels.
• Add more features. Remote control with bluetooth/wifi. Ultrasonic sensor with a servomotor to analyze the environment in front 180 degrees. Wifi camera to be accessed by the smartphone. Homemade Roomba with environment mapping.

In the next iteration I will (or try to) move one engine with a transistor powered by 5V from Arduino.