Special needs projects

Bruthal

A couple of projects I did, firstly in 2010, and again just before Christmas 2012, both similar. They both involved the conversion of a child`s 12v ride on tractor, for use for a child with special needs.

They were converted from standard John Deere Ground Force electric tractors to having a radio controller for the parents to drive it, and also an onboard joystick so the parents can transfer full control to the tractor for the child to drive it, and take back control to the radio at any time.

The first project shows the tractor in use by the users, the second project shows the actual project in more detail. I used more electronics in the second one than the first, but they both operate the same way.

So I thought I would put them here as a matter of interest.

Here is the first one,

And on users youtube page here

And second one.

Knine

They are brillant. I'm looking forward to getting my daughters remote control Car. Have you any recent pictures?

Johnboy1951

A great project!
Thanks for posting

... and well done!

Bruthal

Knine wrote: »

They are brillant. I'm looking forward to getting my daughters remote control Car. Have you any recent pictures?

Think there are one or 2 on the site in the special needs menu.

fergal.b

Great work Bruthal, I think it was 2010 when I talked to you about my son's first and last time on this AKKA machine as with the cutbacks the school could not afford it , well last week with the fundraising of the parents we were able to afford one "Not cheep":eek: for what is basically a remote control car that can carry a wheelchair but an important bit of kit for kids to learn how to use a motorised wheelchair. It's great to see you building your machines and not charging the parents an outrageous fortune because it's for the disabled.
Keep up the good work at putting smiles on kids faces

Here is a little video of my son in action, The white tape on the floor can be used as a boundary setting or as a track for the AKKA to follow when learning forward and backwards it also stops them from wrecking the place

Bruthal

Yes I remember you talking about that fergal, that would have been an interesting project too id say.

I used micro controller chips on the second tractor, which you write programs for, to do what you want them to do. It was easy to write the programs for tractor #2 as I had spent the hard parts of working out how to come up with programs to sense radio control receiver pulse widths etc when first started using the chips 6 months after the first tractor, (as there are plenty of uses for solid state radio controlled switches on model aircraft). Once I cracked that, it was easy to adapt them to stuff like the second tractor.

To come up with something like the AKKA track following machine probably would have been easier than the first tractor project, which was tricky (second was fairly easy), and the line following is another task ideal for using these micro controller chips to do.