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Projects<br />
A Raspberry Pi is<br />
wired up to an L293D<br />
controller. This controls<br />
the original motors from<br />
the remote-control toy<br />
SHOWCASE<br />
STRATOS BOTSARIS<br />
Stratos is a senior Java software<br />
engineer at Intrasoft International<br />
in Greece.<br />
youtu.be/-Wjz6nY9r8c<br />
A webcam is connected and<br />
used to send the video image<br />
from the Spy Rover to an<br />
Android phone<br />
The body of the Spy Rover is<br />
an old remote-control toy with<br />
the top removed<br />
Quick<br />
Facts<br />
> The Spy Rover<br />
works for<br />
around 40<br />
minutes<br />
> At around<br />
2mph, it won’t<br />
break any<br />
speed records<br />
> It took around<br />
three months<br />
to build<br />
> The range<br />
is limited<br />
by the WiFi<br />
connection<br />
> With port<br />
forwarding,<br />
it can be<br />
controlled over<br />
the internet<br />
REMOTE CONTROL<br />
SPY ROVER<br />
Fancy turning an old toy into a remote-control spy? Lucy Hattersley<br />
talks to Stratos Botsaris about his Spy Rover project<br />
J<br />
ava engineer Stratos<br />
Botsaris hacked a remotecontrol<br />
toy and turned<br />
it into a far cooler Pi-powered<br />
Spy Robot. If that wasn’t excting<br />
enough, he now controls it from<br />
his Android phone while it bounces<br />
the video display to the screen.<br />
A project like this deserves<br />
further investigation, so we<br />
caught up with Stratos to ask<br />
about the Spy Rover. “I did not<br />
want to build just another moving<br />
robot,” he says. “At the same<br />
time, I was experimenting with<br />
the video recording capabilities<br />
of Raspberry Pi. So that was the<br />
moment that I came up with the<br />
idea of building a rover that could<br />
take real-time video.<br />
“I wanted to use my Android<br />
programming skills to develop an<br />
application that could display live<br />
video to the user.”<br />
Rather than build a robot from<br />
scratch, Stratos took apart a Big<br />
Bargain King Force Excavator.<br />
With the top half removed, he<br />
slotted in an original Pi Model B<br />
hooked up to a breadboard,<br />
WiFi dongle, and USB webcam.<br />
An L293D chip controls the<br />
motors. “The L293D is a motor<br />
driver integrated circuit that<br />
can simultaneously control two<br />
motors in either direction,” says<br />
Stratos. “If I want to move the<br />
rover forward, I make both motors<br />
turn clockwise, and if I wish to get<br />
36 January 2016<br />
raspberrypi.org/magpi
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