How to Make Arduino Gesture Control Robot at Home Using Radio Module

Hi readers, welcome back to another interesting instructable, In this project, i will show you How To Make Arduino Gesture Control Robot At Home Using a Radio Module in a very easy way.

To begin with, let me go through the features of this project! Like the usual radio-controlled cars that run with a remote this robotic car is remoteless!

I mean it does not have a remote or a control button to move up, down, right, and left.

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Instead this project has the advanced feature of gesture, you will be controlling the car with the gestures of your hand.

How cool is that controlling something with the gestures of your hand that too with the project you could make at home?

With this being said let us see how you can build this project, like always i have also included the complete instructions on building this project along with the circuit diagram and codes.

• Piece of Cardboard
• BO motor and wheels
• Arduino Nano
• Gyro sensor or MPU6050
• NRF 24L01
• Tip 32c Transistor
• 9v Battery and Holder
• L293D servo motor driver
• Hot Glue
• Empty PCB
• Band for Wrist
• Double sided tape
• LED lights(Optional)
• Soldering Iron

To support the four wheels and BO motor I will be using a piece of cardboard.

You can cut the shape of the cardboard as you can see in the images above, if the size of your wheels is big you might need to make some modifications.

Once you have that shape we can start assembling BO motor to this cardboard.

Add a drop of HOT Glue and place BO motor, Make sure the hot glue is not too hot otherwise it may melt the plastic of the motor case.

Repeat the same steps for other side as well after you have all the BO Motors ready you can attach wheels.

Now we can solder the wire to BO motor if it does not have pre soldered wires.

My ends of the wire were from the socket that i found useful for this project, its a connecting wire that can be connected to male type pins with ease.

I will be using a empty PCB to hold the components and make a circuit.

I will start by soldering the slot to hold the Arduino Nano board, This is an easy process if you have some hands on experience in soldering, if not you might need to take the supervision of an expert.

The other way is you can make the circuit on a breadboard but it makes the project too complex.

After the Arduino slot make slot to hold the NRFL201 module as well for the MPU6050.

End of the process you will have a ready transmitter circuit, all it is missing is codes that are essential for working.

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Even here the process is same but here you have the liberty to choose a much larger empty PCB anyway this will be installed on the car so the problem of space usage does not bother much.

Start by soldering slots on an empty PCB where the components will be added later, Then add the transistor and motor drive to PCB directly.

Follow the circuit to make connections, if you miss any the problem of reworking will waste your time.

To power this board i will use rechargeable batteries that i recycled from my old laptop.

I used set of 4 that were soldered together as a pair of 2 to power the entire circuit for a long time.

End of the battery were soldered with the slot that would fit the connecting pins.

Now as we have the circuits of both transmitter and receiver ready we will complete the circuit by adding powering source.

The battery pack that i prepared earlier is added on the frame of car, i will be using double side adhesive to hold the battery pack.

Then connect the terminals of the battery to the circuit board pin.

End of this process we will have the car ready, only one thing pending now is the codes for this robot.

This is the control panel in our project the button are made from integrated circuit as i can define.

Here the small motion sensor inside the gyro sensor also known as MPU6050 controls the entire car movement.

This motion has to be converted to specific commands to be able to read by the Arduino and finally send as radio wave to the receiver.

This task will be done by the Arduino code, copy and paste the below code on your Arduino IDE, after the code is uploaded the receiver is ready for using, now disconnect the USB cable and connect the 9v battery.

I have installed this transmitter on a wrist band that was adjustable so that it can fit any wrist

In the project the car will be controlled by a receiver, Receiver is nothing but the slave Arduino.

We are using the concept of master slave electronics in our project, This Arduino code converts the signals from the transmitter module to meaningful signals that will run the dc motors via the motor driver.

You can see the L293D motor driver on the 2nd image of this step.

You can connect the terminals of DC motor/ BO motor to the slot provided.

After which connect the programming cable to the computer and Arduino.

Copy and paste the receiver code on your IDE and hit on the upload button, in some time the receiving part will be ready, all you have to do is connect the battery supply to the circuit.

Using this gesture control robot is very easy, Just connect the batteries to both Car and the remote(transmitter on hand)

The transmitter that will be fit in your and will work as a remote control but without any buttons.

When you move your hand to the directions the change in orientation will be detected by the gyroscopic sensor and according to the movement the Arduino board from Tx or transmitter sends signal to the receiver board found in the Robotic car and because of this your robot moves as per your hand gestures.

This is a very fun toy to play with if you are a electronics lover.

The backup time of this robot is very high so that you can enjoy for quite a long time.

This video has all the detailed steps that i stated above, if you have any questions on the making of this project you can watch this video or ask us directly in the comments. Don't miss to check the cool movement of this robot car.

If you like the project take some time to share it with your friends who needs to see this.