Before I begin I just want to point out that I have never built robots before, but seeing as my Major is Computer and Electrical Engineering I figure waiting around for it to be taught in class is boring and I might as well get a head start on robotics.
I want to build a pair of differential drive robots very similar to the $50 Robot tutorial on this site. The only modifications I want to make is to make them "battlebots". I want to add IR sensors onto the robots and have an LED light up when they have been shot by another robot. Also, to allow for further modifications, I want to allow the robots to communicate with my computer via Bluetooth. The reason for this being that, if the project goes well, It should be a piece of cake to write a program on my computer to do things such as keep score and add special "game modes" or what not. But, that is all for the future.
My question is this, In terms of drive, I see two options.
1) Go out and buy some cheap remote control cars, tear them apart, and use to included hardware with the servos I buy for the $50 robot to drive it around. Also buy the microcontroller and have that operate separately from the drive system and take car of receiving hits (turn on and LED to show that it has been shot). I see a problem with this in that it might be hard to get the remote control car hardware to activate an IR device, but I have never tried this of course. In this scenario the bluetooth would not be required unless I wanted to communicate with the computer for score keeping or something like that.
2) Buy the bluetooth stuff, hook them up, and then control the robots via bluetooth. That way I could control them by keyboard, gamepad, or even hook a wii remote to it. Also since everything is controlled via microcontroller I could add things such as "number of bullets" or have the robot stop receiving input once it has been shot to show that it has "died"
So before I get started on this project (In about a week or so), I like to get some opinions on which would be the better option. I'm looking at a few deciding factors,
1) Cost (if adding the bluetooth is going to run the total up too much, I would rather avoid it)
2) Modifiable - I really like the idea of driving the robots around with my wii remote, even if the wii remote had to talk to the computer and the computer relayed the messages to the robot, I still think it would be really cool.
3) Difficulty - This being my first robotics project, If bluetooth is really too hard to handle, I might decide to scrap it.
4) How much will I learn - It kinda feels like if it go out and buy two remote control cars, I'm not really going to learn anything since everything will already be put together. I mean, why go through building all this stuff If I can just go buy two RC cars and stick laser tag equipment on top of them and achieve the same result if not for the fact that I'll learn valuable knowledge doing this.
What do you guys think?
Thanks,