Power Wheels Modifications for Disabilities Including Ultrasonic Sensor, Joystick Steering, & More | #Tech4Good
Thanks to the Barstow School, FRC Team 1939 The Barstow KUHNIGITS, and James George Whitehill for their work on this project and sending this in!
Established in 2006, The Barstow KUHNIGITS is a FIRST Robotics Competition team located at The Barstow School in Kansas City, Missouri. See more about us at: www.frcteam1939.com
Our award-winning head coach, Gavin Wood, teaches his students how their STEM skills can help make the world a better place and inspire the youth of today to pursue careers in STEM fields and creates the leaders of tomorrow.
In 2015, we began our partnership with Variety KC GoBabyGo Powered by Rockhurst University led by Kendra Gagnon in Kansas City, Mo. GoBabyGo is an international organization founded by Dr. Cole Galloway to provide children with disabilities the opportunity to move independently. Variety KC has generously provided donations to buy all the necessary parts and cars for modification.
The Power Wheels ® Wild Thing by Fisher-Price (LINK) was built and modified as a result of the collaboration between our team and GoBabyGo. Zuhair Hawa and Joey Holliday from The Barstow School led the modification of the car and compiled these instructions. Gavin Wood, Miles Knight, George Whitehill, Sophie Johnson, Aasim Hawa, Aiden Jacobs, Ashley Decker and several other team members also helped with the adaptations. Dr. Kendra Gagnon from Rockhurst University also contributed to this manual.
Adafruit Pro Trinket – 5V 16MHz: Trinket’s got a big sister in town – the Pro Trinket 5V! Pro Trinket combines everything you love about Trinket with the familiarity of the common core Arduino chip, the ATmega328. It’s like an Arduino Pro Mini with more pins and USB tossed in, so delicious. Read more.
Mini Analog Joystick – 10K Potentiometers: Sometimes a simple analog control device can be the perfect tactile solution for your project, but they can be surprisingly hard to come by. Luckily we’ve found a low cost, quality Mini Analog Joystick to fill you directional analog input needs! Read more.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
