Duct Crawler

thingiverse

Ok. Here's something no one else will ever create. For education, I'll share this now. To cut to the chase, my daughter's bedroom was without proper air supply through ducts. No crawlspace existed under our house but all the supply ducts were located under the floor. AC specialists told me they'd have to rip up all floors in her room plus two more rooms just to diagnose the issue. I designed this tiny robot crawler to get it into a 7" supply pipe and send live feed through an HD Microsoft webcam, so I could inspect the ducts and identify where the blockage was.\nThe track parts and motor/gearbox come from a Tamiya 70100 track and wheel set. The camera is a Microsoft HD webcam. The lights are actually an over-the-counter $1 pocket light bought at harbor freight .http://www.harborfreight.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/m/image_14142.jpg.\nI used just the reflectors and PCB, and replaced two of the LEDs with super bright ones. This little crawler can move forward or backward inside a duct. A cable attached to it provides power for lights and motor. The webcam has a 3ft USB cord, and I added a 12ft extension too so I could send the gadget in the duct 15 ft away from me. Trying to add another extension was impossible, because my webcam wouldn't work anymore then. So right now this robot can go in the duct 15 feet without issue.\nI found an old remote control lying around that belonged to some toy, which had a battery pack, and used it for the project as well.\nThe tamiya track and wheel set stl file is attached, should anyone wish to use it to make something entirely new. I also include the entire assembly's stl file just in case.