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title: 'The Birth of Triode Car: The Line Follower'

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# The Birth of Triode Car: The Line Follower

As technology progresses, the world is constantly undergoing drastic change, and the learning curve of engineering field gets steeper every day.  Therefore, our team designed a series of courses for starters to have a better understanding in the field of robotics, electronics, and electrical engineering. This project provides an insight for those desire to learn the basic concept of automation. 

# Introduction
The Triode Car is a line-following robot that can help students learn the fundamentals of robotics.  While completing this project, one may experience the bare bone of automation. There are three keypoints to present throughout this series. 

Firstly, distinguishing electrical components and learning how they work is essential as we use electronic devices every day without knowing how the magic happens beneath the skin.  

Secondly, installing the components onto the PCB through soldering.  Soldering is usually considered dangerous as we are unfamiliar with the tools.  Most people fear that we might break something or injure ourselves.  However, with the material cost of roughly $5 dollars, this small project made affordable for most students.  

Lastly, programming is rapidly becoming one of the most practical skills to learn in the past decade. The assembled car can be controlled through programing via the BBC:Microbit.  

Engineering is all about trial and error, learning through mistakes helps us grow. Using the right tools for the job is also important.  We will recommend a list of affordable tools that may help  simplify this process.

# Common Electrical Components
With the implementation of multiple electronic components on the Triode Car, students may get a gist of what’s under the hood of most electronics.  Getting familiar with common parts such as, LED, resistor, DC motor and their corresponding symbols on the schematics is crucial as one little misplacement might damage other components. This makes learning the connection of electrical components as they are exposed and can be measured directly with a multimeter.

[A photo for every part]

The photo above shows the parts needed to assemble the Triode Car. In order to place the right components into their corresponding place, there will be a separate article explaining how to read the schematics and the design concept of the electrical circuit. 

# Soldering and Testing Hardware
Soldering is the most common way to install electronic components. After fully assembling the car, one may get a general understanding of how an electrical circuit works.  The concept of line-following car is achieved by reading the resistance of the photoresistors instead of the commonly seen IR sensors.  The LM393P chip compares the resistance difference of the two photoresistors then distrubutes power to the motor with the less resistance.  

In addition to the components provided, we can add our own peripherals, such as, ultrasonic sensors, and buzzers, etc.

The car can now run independently due to the LM393P controller on board. Print out the race track and perform a test run. Adjust the potentiometers to 3KΩ to balance the analog signal caught by the photoresistor.
[Video for balancing signals]

# MicroPython Programming
After some basic tests to ensure the car is funtioning properly, it is now ready for us to learn MicroPython programming.  The car has a socket for Micro:bit, we will be using it as our main console.  The main goal is to write a program that mimics the IC state shown during the testing.

[video of car controlled via microbit]

Oftentimes programming is thought as hard to learn or understand due to the lack of physical operation and a platform to express the ideas.  Hence the reason why Arduino has became extremely popular umongst schools and the Maker community.  We believe the Triode Car can provide an eased learning experience. Even after finishing the project, there is still room for improvement.  Just because something works does not mean it is perfect.  The strive for perfection is the spirit of engineering.
