This is the electronics section of the Project. It shows all electronic components required, how they work and where they go... The Electronic and Robotic sections are completely connected so to understand the total electronic part, you need to view the robotics section too. We will also be showing you many possibilities you can work on according to which is more available to you.

WALL-E has 9 total functions - Locomotion, Steering, Right Shoulder, Left Shoulder, Right elbow, fingers, storage hatch, main torch and finally, the laser pointer. The Torch and the pointer will take in unidirectional current whereas, all the functions requiring a motor will need to be controlled as to use its bidirectional current facility. The 2 light functions can be controlled with auxiliary power directly from the battery. It means that when we switch WALL-E on, they automatically get turned on. That is simple. Just use the main power switch as it's. And the fingers motor can also be connected parallel with the steering motor as when the fingers will be in use, WALL-E will be stationary and vice versa. A camera is also present in Wall-E but that will be talked about in the Robotics and Software Section. So basically we need a control system to control 6 functions.

There are 3 basic ways of controlling wall-e. Out of which 1 allows programming it. The First is to get an R/c Transmitter and Receiver set. Example. VexRobotics offers a set for $39,99 which is approximately Rs. 1800. This is very simple to use but does not allow programming. The remote comes as a whole and the motors and auxiliary powers must just be connected to the receiver. All instructions are giver.
Download the VEX ROBOTICS Transmitter and Receiver Set MANUAL HERE.

Another way is to break open 3 r/c cars and use your computer's male parallel port to control it! You can buy a cheap R/c car from almost any electronic toy shop for $5 or Rs. 250. Better not spend a lot but if you want good range, you might leave this method. Scroll down to see what to do here. It's good if you want to stay low on the budget.

The third way is only to be followed if you don't mind a large budget or you already have these materials. It involves controlling WALL-E with a computer with wifi enabled. You must also have a UPS and a wireless router.To know more about this method, Scroll down to this section.

NOTE - For WALL-E, we have used 2 wi-router function and 4 male parallel port function.(2-way switch used instead of 3-way)
A Male Parallel Port is a basic 25-pin computer connection that is usually used to connect the printer to your computer. All Laptops may not have a male parallel ports but you can easily buy a usb to parallel port converter cable. A parallel port is used to control connections with a software you need to program accordingly. For WALL-E, I've modified other programs are is there in the software section. To program or edit yourself, you can also download Microsoft Robotics Studio or Microchip MPLAB from the Software Section. In a male parallel pot, the pins 18 to 25 are ground pins. We will be using the pin 23 for ground. GROUND means, it must be connected to the negative terminal of a battery or power source. And pins 1 - 9 are for the functions. As a parallel port is wired, we will just be connecting it to the R/c Transmitter. You'll need to buy 3 for 6 functions. The ADVANTAGE here is that you can actually program the robot to do the functions beforehand and then activate the sequence! All instructions come with our controller package you can download at the software section. Parallel ports can also be used for many other functions like making your own led matrix screen and others.
In JBProjects.net, you can see how the do many other things with parallel ports!



Now to get started on the electronics, First, Open up the transmitter you got with the r/c toy. In it, you will see 4 switches of joystick connections. You may only see 2 joysticks but when you remove the joystick, you'll see 3 or four soldered bits. When there's 3, the middle one is the GROUND. But when there are 4 in a joystick, you'll need to find out which is ground using a multimeter. Do this for both joysticks or all four switches. Using wires and a soldering machine, connect all the GROUND to a single wire, and extend this single wire, you then need to make 6 branches from this. Name or label one the actual GND to the Battery or power source, let one be the connection to the Male parallel port's pin 23, and the other four connect to 4 2N3904 NPN transistors as in the diagram. Connect the GND to battery to the remote controls batteries' negative terminal. Connect the pin 23 connection to the pin 23.
Now, As in the transistor diagram, connect the four the four switch wires to the positive terminal of the r/c switches. And connect the PC pins to the allocated pins in the male parallel ports. That's it! You're done with the control section. All you have to do is download the WALL-E Controller software we compiled and modified and try out different port addresses. The default address will be 888. If you can't seen to control with that, try out 887 and 886. If Even these aren't working, ask your local computer repair shot to provide you with the MPP address. Now it's very simple, all you have to do is carefully open up your r/c toy and remove everything. DO NOT DISCONNECT THE WIRES! Now carefully, cut the wires to the motors and extend them to your motor wires.

Place the receiver microchip in your ROBOT (Ours is of course WALL-E). Try out if it works till here. Then only continue! If it doesn't, ask us for help at narendranmuraleedharan@yahoo.com.
Repeat the above steps for 3 transmitters.(make sure they emit radiations of different frequencies.) Just leave the part of connecting them to parallel ports!. Now is the complicated part. For six functions. you'll need 4 three-way switches. You can also use the simple paperclip switch. Make one base and 3 to connect it to. Now , cut all the positive connections to the male parallel port.(there will be four) Connect the four from the parallel port to the base of the 3-way switch. And the 4 wires from each of the transmitters be connected to each pin of each 3 way switch! Now make a note of which Transmitter is for which control. Let Locomotion and Steering be one and choose the others according to what you want. That's it! YOU ARE DONE WITH YOUR ROBOT! Just download the software for it and it's ready!





In this section, we'll be controlling WALL-E using a laptop with a wifi service, a wireless router/modem, a UPS to power up the wi-router and a PCB or a complex IC(integrated circuit) board which we'll be making!
This is a section you must follow only if you don't mind spending lots of money or you already have a wi-router, a UPS and a wifi enabled laptop.

The Basic Components required to make the decoder micro-controller circuit and to use it are:
1) PIC 16F628a - It is the base micro-controller IC in the circuit we're going to make.
2) MAXIM MAX232 - It is the Decoder we'll be using to convert RS232 Serial port signals to basic bidirectional Motor Outputs.
3) 5x 0.1uF capacitors 4) DB9_FEMALE RS232 Serial Port 5) 2x 200 ohms resistors 6) LEDs of laser and torch lights and 7) 5V to 12 V battery pack or single battery 8) RS232 to ethernet converter cable 9) circuit board 10) tons of wire 11) soldering machine

The following is the schematic circuit diagram to be followed while making the microchip board.

Follow this to make the decoder micro-controller chip and connect the serial port to a serial RS232 to ethernet cable.
Now Fit in a UPS system into the robot and connect a wireless router to it. The ethernet converter cable will go into the ethernet or LAN port in the router. The rest will be told to you in the other sections.
For any help, e-mail narendranmuraleedharan@yahoo.com