MouseBot Is Quick! Powerful Motor Driver Transistors

Beefy Motor Driver Transistors - Makes MouseBot Move Quick. Like a Mouse!

Part 4 Wall Follower Mouse 'Bot Transformation

Hold on, last time we said we would add some gumption to our MouseBot. We will accomplish this feat while reducing the power disapated in those little innocent 3904's... Basically, this means we don't melt our Mouse's head...

From Mouse Bot Tra...

While the concept is covered in this schematic, the real-world shows that these motors are drawing a lot of power at startup, this overheats the 3904's, so far this means we've only been testing MouseBot... It's time for this robot to distribute the power to another transistor to stabilize the smaller transistors. This is going to allow MouseBot to do all sorts of things..

From Mouse Bot Tra...

MouseBot gets really real after you put in the TIP-29's (or whatever lives in your junkbox)... Now the mouse scoots so fast, it seems a little nervous, like it's biological counterpart...

For the issues and tricks, here's what I did:

• Mount the Power Transistors right down at the motors, if you bend them like wings, you can connect to their bases and feed power directly from the on/off switch
• With the batteries I'm using AA-1700 mah, you have to turn off brown out protection to allow the processor to go under 3 and 1/2 volts or so, you also need to keep the batteries fresh
• The four battery clip is a little large and collides with the top of the back, shim it in the back so it leans forward, that works.

That's it!!

Have fun programming your MouseBot!!!