Configuring your mobile robot

In this recipe, we are simply going to make sure that the robot we assembled is working correctly, by testing the motors of the robot. This will allow us to be sure that everything is working later when it comes to writing more complex sketches to control the robot.

Getting ready

Here, you simply need to make sure that you followed the previous recipe to assemble the robot. Also make sure that the batteries are fully charged, and that the robot's wheels or tracks are not touching the ground, as we simply want to test the motors here.

How to do it...

We are now going to build a sketch to test the motors of the robot. As a test, we'll make the robot go forward, and then stop, and repeat the process.

First, we define which pins the L293D chip is connected to on the Arduino board:

// Define motor pins
int motorOnePlus = 6;
int motorOneMinus = 7;
int motorOneEnable = 5;

int motorTwoPlus = 8;
int motorTwoMinus = 9;
int motorTwoEnable = 4;

After that, in the setup() function...