Electronic Hardware

An IMU outputs various data regarding movement and orientation, and the IMU we chose for our purposes, the BNO085, reads out gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer data, as well as many other derived values that it can provide with some sensor fusion magic!

Pairing this with a microcontroller, in this case, the ESP32S2-SOLO, chosen for its flexible range of applications, extensive documentation, and ability to transmit data wirelessly via WiFi or Bluetooth, we can easily take the sensor data and put it to use to actuate two 9g servos that are hooked up to both wings on our car, and also turn on an LED to indicate that the system is either up or down. Throw in a 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator for precise timing, a voltage regulator (LD1117S50TR) to make sure we have a constant power supply to the system, a USB receptacle for writing to the microcontroller, and a handful of other passive capacitors and resistors, and you have the electronic hardware for the system! (*disclaimer: this will all be done on a small RC car simply as a proof of concept).

Wiring Schematic

Final PCB Layout (ft. Professor George Anwar 🐐)

To streamline the mess of wires that would normally occur in such a project, I tried my hand at PCB design!

Prototyping

And of course, no electrical engineering project is complete without a little breadboarding, so here is a quick little pic of our prototype featuring the breakout version of the IMU we used and also a little reveal of a blank PCB the day it came in :) 

Code

Utilizing a mix of linear acceleration values, angular velocity, and several if-else statements, I created some rough code in Arduino IDE (chosen for it's easy to use environment, expansive selection of libraries, and faster processing speeds for mathematical functions) that detects if our car is turning, actuates the two servos and LED, and sends a message to us via MQTT to indicate that the system is active. If interested, feel free to click here to check out our code (copied to a Google Doc for ease of reading)! 

A Short Demonstration