I needed a platform to try out the Dagu Explorer robot control board. So I built one using a plastic plate from an old CD Rom drive, a couple of geared motors, wheels from a “Turbo Diesel” dump truck toy (a knock-off of the Tonka Dump Truck?), and an Arduino UNO.

I made a platform from the plastic base plate of an old CD Rom drive, cutting it to about the same length as the Explorer board, so that the corner infra-red sensors would over-hang the ends. This was a mistake! It turns out that the sensors are easily bent in collisions, and it would have been better to have them slightly behind the corner edges of the base plate.

Originally I was going to use a toy dump truck as the platform, but the Explorer board didn't really fit (and the corner sensors wouldn't have been any use). So I ended up just using two of its wheels.

The two, 45 year old, 6V geared motors were bolted to the plate and a single old furniture caster wheel was mounted using old Meccano L brackets on the front. The geared motors were bought to use in building a toy long before micro processors or micro controllers were ever invented, but never used. They have an adjustable gearbox that allows selecting gear ratios from 3:1 to 16:1.

The caster wheel has a ball-bearing axle, so rotates freely and is capable of operating with a far greater load that this robot will ever impose on it.

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