I've completed preliminary work on the first stage of a robot I've been building. It is my first, a basic autonomous bot using a Parallax Ping sensor and a SeeedStudio Motor Shield V2. I'd not seen any articles on using the motor shield, so I hand-crafted a driver for it. I'll be posting the code into this forum once I get it completed and have some good pictures and video, and I'm planning on adding a few ideas to this as I go.
There's one problem, and for all you robot experts out there this should be basic. So please, help. I'm so close!
I'm blocked, however, by one very basic thing. The configuration is pretty simple.
- Netduino 2 atop robot chassis
- Seeed shield atop Netduino
- Connections to breadboard, into which Ping sensor is plugged
Here's the problem, with which I'd love some guidance. When I put batteries into the battery pack and it powers up, the wheels spin, but the Ping doesn't turn on. When I plug in to USB, the Ping turns on. It seems like the power isn't getting transmitted to the breadboard from the 5V jumper on the shield. There's probably a dirt-simple fix for this, any help would be much appreciated.
There's a few pictures of the bot in the attachment, as well as the motor driver code. Once the whole thing is complete I'll definitely share more the whole project (probably via GitHub) and blog about it.
Disclaimer: I asked my 6-year-old son what the name should be and he chose the name, which matches the name of a big hero character. I'll change it before it goes out, wouldn't want to violate copyrights!