In my STEM class, a friend and I set out to venture upon some sort of gear to aid in transportation via foot. We came up with the idea of motorized shoes. The fundraiser is over, and we got 10% of what we wanted, but it's alright! We were able to shrink our budget to $150, which we spared from the funds as well as through fundraisers at school.
Essentially, we are creating a device to aid a user in walking through the form of placing motorized wheels at the bottom of the shoes. For the control, there is a high-resolution gyroscope. As the user tilts forward, motor power is increased in the forward direction through the use of an H-Bridge controller. This causes the device to lunge forward and straighten itself out. When the user leans backwards, the H-Bridge is first set to braking, converting all the momentum of the shoe to heat, dissipated by our MOSFETs. If the user is standing straight, the H-Bridge will be shut off.
The control systems are based off of Arduino Mini Pros. Yes, I've never used an Arduino and it will be new. I am used to the Parallax Propeller and BASIC Stamp architectures for basic things. For anything more complex, I prefer a Parallax Propeller working together with the Raspberry Pi.
If you guys are wishing to check out our fundraiser, here's a link.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/motorized-shoes-the-blue-lodhaIt was our first croudfunding-based fundraiser and thus had many loose ends. This resulted in the failure to reach our goal. If I were to relaunch the campaign, I now understand how to make it much more successful
That's the basic detailed description on how the device will work, and you all are probably bored to death by now!
I would like feedback towards our project -- it's impracticalities, etc.
I would also like some help so I can complete the build and code of the project.
The H-Bridge drivers are based out of N-Channel MOSFETs. These MOSFETs came with the issue that they are not TTL-rated. Thus, I designed in some 2N3904 transistors to take a 3.3v or 5.0v microcontroller signal and saturate the MOSFET.
We are using a LiPo battery for the first time so we are being a bit cautious. In our setup, for safety, we will have an LM34 temperature sensor in the battery holder to measure the battery temperature.
For overvoltage and undervoltage detection, we will have a resistor voltage divider so it can be measured by the ADC in the Arduinos with their 5v ADC reference.
A picture of the schematic of the H-Bridge driver is attached.