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I put together the a Herbie the Mousebot the other day and he is FAST! Too fast to demonstrate in a small area.

Have a look a this video to see just how he zips around.

Documentation: Mousebot

So my question is - how should i go about slowing him down a bit - so i can demonstrate it in a 1m x 1m area.

Cheers,

Mad_z

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I helped my mate make a couple of these for a university project, wow those things are crazy! I just remember having loads of hassle trying to glue a lever onto a micro switch at the front (so it turns around when it hits a wall). I think he'd bought the basic kit, so we were building them into old computer mouses. I think they're a fantastic starter robot kit! – Jim♦ Jan 11 at 7:51
It would be groovy to design an evasive robot with a bright light on for the mousebot to chase after! – Jim♦ Jan 11 at 7:59

2 Answers

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I'd imagine a resistor on the positive connection to the motors would do the trick. You will probably need to experiment with the value to get it right.

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 Yes, this does work; I'm using this in one of my robots and it works beautifully. Get a high-turn 10k potentiometer, and you can find the value you need pretty easily. – Shawn J. Goff Jan 10 at 13:31
That's cool, you could get a stereo potentiometer, then you could adjust the top speed of both the motors with one knob, then you could change the speed for different applications/demonstrations. – Jim♦ Jan 11 at 7:44
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Decreasing the voltage going into the motor will cause it to go slower. As Jim said putting a resistor just before going into the motor is an excellent way but you will need to switch resistors each time you want to speed back up. Better then using just a regular resistor you may try a potentiometer which is a variable resistor. You use it the same way but you can turn the potentiometers up or down to give more speed or less

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