What is Crazy Caterpillar?
My friend Emily, who is a Secondary School Teacher, asked me to design a lovely bionic animal as a training aid which could help make their study more interesting.
She told me that for children at this stage, cooperation is as important as competition. She hopes to get a STEM toy that will interest children and foster a sense of cooperation and competition.
So I made the Crazy Caterpillar for her. The small worm has two heads. They can be controlled by two different IR remote controllers. They can crawl step by step.
Therefore, every two students can make and play with the caterpillar together. In one class, many caterpillars can be used. After class, they even can play an interesting game named AMAZING CATERPILLAR RACE with their own caterpillars. The fastest caterpillar will win and the team will get the reward.
Two player: Coordinate with partner, go go go...
Multiplayer: Coordinate with partner, to make the caterpillar move up and down effectively, go go go...
设计灵感：
毛毛虫仿生设计（外形仿生，运动形态仿生）
Now,I’ll show how to make it. If you’re interested in it, you can follow me.
Steps：
1.Prepare the following electronic modules and connect them together:
Grove_Mini_I2C_Motor_Driver *2
Motor *4
Battery *1
We use a tiny Arduino compatible board - Grove Joint as the controller here, which include 2 Grove connector.
And we have 2 Grove - Mini I2C Motor Driver to drive the 4 motors. Each Grove - Mini I2C Motor Drive can drive 2 motors, as there're 4 motors.
First of all, let'a make a different address of the Grove - Mini I2C Motor Driver, please refer to wiki of the driver.
As there's only one I2C connector on Joint, so a Grove - I2C Hub is needed.
About the Grove - IR Receiver, we connect it to the rest of Grove connector, which is D3 and D5.
2.Software Works
Grove - Joint is an Arduino compatible board.
Let's download the code here.
When you get to the github page, find a Download ZIP button, click to download the code.
The code you downloaded is not an Arduino library, it's a sketchbook, which is include all the library the project need. Unzip the file you had downloaded from github, you will get a folder named CrazyCaterpillar-master
Open your Arduino IDE, click File > Preferences > Sketchbook Location, browse to the folder we had mentioned above - CrazyCaterpillar-master. Then click OK to save it.
Close and re-open Arduino IDE, click File > Sketchbook > demo, then the main code of this project is open.
Select the right board (3.3V 16M 328) and port to upload the code. Refer to the image above.
And then test IR Receiver
Open the code IRecive, upload the Grove - Joint, and open the Serial monitor @115200 baud rate.
Try to press a button in the remote, see if you can get a number printed at the monitor.
If no, maybe your remote is not supported, try another remote.
The number is the key of a button, you need to know the key of the button that used.
And then test Moto
Connect the 2 Grove - Mini I2C Motor Driver to Grove - Joint(with a Grove - I2C hub), and the whole 4 motors to the driver.
Open the code MotorTest, which is a simple code to test the motor. You will find thr 4 motors move forward for 100ms and then backward for 100ms, and loop.
If the motors don't move, please double check your hardware.
And the you can open the demo example, this is the code of the final project.
Upload the code to Grove - Joint.
3.Design and Laser Cut
Here I use the 3D modeling software Rhino. The advantage of using it to make cutting drawings is that it can be verified in 3D. Finally, it is transformed into 2D cutting drawings.And then I used 3mm thick wood and cut out the drawings with a laser cutter.
4.Assemble
Finally, assemble it in six sides. Remember to put in the electronic modules that were connected at the beginning
