RC cars, small automations began as an hobby, with my children.

Now as some of the projects are becoming mainstream and complex, here are some of the mistakes any beginner would commit.

• Buying low end motors or salvaging motors from broken items
  • This would top all mistakes, since having different types of motors, for doing the same work. I have spend lots of time playing with PWM, and lot of code to match speeds of different types of motors.
  • Buy graded motors, which behave similarly, have uniform torque and speed.
• L293D motor driver, do not use them for anything serious
  • These drivers take a 1 volt drop, from the actual supplied voltage
  • Use a H Bridge motor driver instead
• Not all pin outs support PWM, read, re read documentation.
  • Most often we use PWM to control speed of motors and actuators
  • Read documentation of dev boards, choose boards which have many PWM controllable pins
• Check all boards, even though from same provider, or uses the same chipset.
• Not all pins support interrupt in inputs, again read documenation, do not assume anything, test the pins before using on a project
• Any serious work, would need inverse kinematics, filters, sensor integration, start using ROS, Gazebo, so models can be worked first on simulation
• ROS DDS is unbeatable, do not try to create something your own messaging platform, at the end you would need all the features of ROS
• You would need ROS RViz, and Gazebo to simulate movements, before implementing them in real world, save a ton of time