VoltsWagon

Front View
Birds-Eye View
Close - up View
Under the hood view
Side View

Inspiration

We were inspired by Pokémon Go: a creative way to have fun while doing something productive. With our VoltsWagon, you can have fun driving a car with a PS4 controller all while cleaning up the planet!

What it does

The car is equipped with clamps to safely and efficiently dispose of trash on the streets. Press X on the PS4 controller to close the clamps around the object, transport it using the controller's joystick, and press O to release it. It's a fun way to clean up the streets without breaking your back.

How we built it

The wheels are connected to a stepper motor with an extension that rotates and drags the wheels along with it. One claw of the clamp is controlled by a servo and rotates the 2nd claw using friction. Both motors are connected to the Arduino Uno board and the laptop, which is linked to the controller via Bluetooth. The motor motions are mapped to controls on the controller using python's pygame library and the Arduino IDE, with the laptop as the intermediary.

Challenges we ran into

Day 1: the first Arduino we used was fried, but we couldn't figure out what the problem was until 2 hours into the competition, when we thought of switching Arduino boards. Then, the servo motor took 6 hours to get working because we and the mentors could not figure out what the problem was (it turned out our wiring and the motor were faulty, and we had to swap them out). Later, the stepper motor wouldn't turn the 3D printed arm it's attached to, and we had to iterate through the motor to find the optimal speed and time/rotation of the motor to ensure proper rotation of the arm, and therefore the wheels

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Putting it all together was a real moment of ecstasy: getting the servo and stepper motors to work in harmony and adjusting the car to support the weight of the hardware was a challenge, but thankfully, we were able to do it.

What we learned

We weren't very experienced with hardware coming in, so the learning curve and experience was exceptional for us. From understanding how to connect the servo (Brown is Ground!) and how to optimize the stepper motor's speed, our knowledge of circuits and electronic hardware grew exponentially in the span of 24h. We also used our software skills to great effect: by teaching us how to communicate with the Arduino board using C++ and how to send it signals from the controller using python, this project greatly expanded our software capabilities, too.

What's next for VoltsWagon

Soon, we hope to expand wireless control to be able to control it from the comfort of your own home by installing a camera on every car and extending Bluetooth range. Down the line, we could create an app (in partnership with Niantic?) that would show the user live feed from the camera, giving them first person view of the car, and give them the ability to clean the streets from home.