Make an Internet-controlled Bolt Robot Car

Have a spare Bolt WiFi module, case, and some other stuff? This project is perfect for you.

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We start working in the morning, repeating the same thing day after day, and occasionally we need a break and some entertainment. Playing table football all the time doesn't satisfy us, and it's noisy and disturbing to others. So, in order to stay calm, we started thinking about what we could do to relax us but still keep us in the "work zone". Thus, this little robot car came into being.

So finally we decided to make an internet-controlled-wt-for-it-RC robot with a little extra functionality.

Collecting Parts

We arrived at the store, which was filled with bags and components that would make your eyes gleam with greed, and we gathered what we needed:

Bolt Wifi Module

Basic Robot

UNO or Boltduino

L298N Motor Driver Shield

connect

We are safely back from the "forest" with all the parts we need. It's time to work our magic and assemble this little robot.

Assembling the Hardware

Install the casters at the front center of the chassis.

Assemble the robot car chassis and attach the two DC motors using nuts and bolts along with the wheels provided as shown in the picture.

NOTE: Connect the jacks to the motor terminals before connecting them to the chassis.

Connect the terminals of the motor to the L298N motor driver module.

Note: Connect both terminals of the motor to the same side of the drive module.

Connect the 5V pin and GND pin of the driver module to the 5V and GND of Arduino respectively.

Connect the Bolt's 5V, GND, Tx, and Rx pins to the Arduino's 5V, GND, Rx, and Tx pins, respectively. For the Boltduino, connect the Bolt unit into the existing slot.

Connect the four input terminals (IN1, IN2, IN3, IN4) to pins 6, 7, 8, and 9 respectively.

Connect the 5V, GND and OUT pins of the proximity sensor to the 5V, GND and 3 pins of Arduino respectively.

Connecting Bolt to the Cloud

After assembling the hardware, register and connect your Bolt unit to the Bolt Cloud.

We need to bring this robot to life with code and connect it to the cloud. Follow along to make your robot work, too.

Step 1: Get the code.

Get the code from below this article. .zip file or clone it to your system, as applicable.

Step 2: Use the code.

The code has two parts:

A folder called

In this folder there are two files i. controller.html ii. controller.js. We will talk about them later.

Then comes the Arduino firmware in a file called Bolt_Robot_Car.ino. This will be flashed/uploaded on your Arduino.

Step 3: Setting up the Arduino.

After finishing the hardware setup and connecting the Bolt to the cloud, upload the firmware in the file Bolt_Robot_Car.ino to your Arduino.

Step 4: Controller Application.

Double-click the controller.html file and you should see the following web page.

Now enter your API Key and Device ID in their respective fields and click Submit. You can get the API Key and Device ID from the Bolt Cloud Dashboard.

After this, you can use the control buttons to control the movement of the robot. Pressing the button triggers a specific function (check the file controller.js) to send the command to the Bolt cloud and then to your Bolt WiFi module. Now you have an RC robot and you can do whatever you want with it. You can do a lot of things with it, you can attach some to it or make it automatic or whatever you want.