R/C Lawnmower Based on Arduino

Figure 1 

An Arduino is used as an R/C interface that obtains commands from R/C receiver in order to control the wheel motors of a lawnmower through H-bridge motor driver.

The components used in building this project includes an R/C lawnmower using the Arduino, a pair of cheap R/C transmitter and receiver., and a couple of electric wheelchair motors. Another ATmega168 is used to control a normally open 60A power relay. Unless the 2nd microcontroller provides good signal, the relay disconnects the power to the motor controller. the signal is either ON or OFF and gets updated every 2 seconds. To make the failsafe more reliable, the way the code reads the PPM signals was changed.

The most expensive part of the project is the pair of R/C radio transmitter and receiver with 6-channel FM system. To provide the control, the code should be uploaded to the Arduino and plugging in the 2 channels to be used into the Digital pins 2 and 3 of the Arduino. A single channel on a breadboard is used to control 3 LEDs consisting of red for Forward, yellow for Reverse, and green for Neutral, which helps code adjustment.

Rest of the project