My First Raspberry Pi Robot, Part 1

I was involved in robotics since mid-2018 when I bought my first robotics kit known as the CamJam Edukit 3. Around this time, I was and I am still into IT and programming with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino. However, I got this kit to expand on my skills and I was also inspired by YouTuber Christopher J. Barnatt aka Explaining Computers. His Raspberry Pi Robotics videos gave me the confidence to build my own robot. So I bought the CamJam Edukit 3 from the Pi Hut which came with the following:

1. The Motor Controller board with screw terminals
2. Two 6V DC motors with pre-soldered wires
3. Two red custom wheels
4. A small ball castor
5. A battery box for 4 AA batteries which has a power switch
6. A small breadboard
7. An HCSR04 Distance Sensor
8. A line follower Sensor
9. 2 330 Ohm Resistors and 2 470 Ohm Resistors
10. Jumper Wires

For the chassis, I bought a generic robot chassis from Amazon that was very inexpensive and did have 2 DC Motors of the same color and voltage as well as a battery pack. However, I did not need either of those to assemble my robot. I assembled the chassis before I did anything else. To control the robot I used a Raspberry Pi Zero W as it uses less power and has a small form factor. I also bought a case for the Pi Zero W to avoid any damage. I did have to modify the case since the controller board would not fit. First, I had to attach the wires going from the motor to the two screw terminals and then attached the wires for the battery pack. I added a USB power bank under the Pi Zero and held both with double sided tape. I connected the power bank to the micro USB power connector and added a USB OTG connector to the other micro USB port. I used double sided tape on the battery pack to hold it still but made sure I was able to swap out the batteries when needed. Below was the result of my labors.

My first Raspberry Pi Robot

As you can tell I also added two extra jumper wires which I used for an LED that would blink whenever the robot would turn on. I will cover that in part two where I get into the code. You can also notice the cardboard I added to protect the power bank from the sun as lithium batteries are known to catch fire. I used zip ties as well to keep the wires from interfering with movement. I also added Linux Mint and Ubuntu stickers just for decoration. In the next part, I will show you the first code I ever used for the robot to get an understanding of how I set things up.