Power Steering... (Geeky blog)

Hi Ladies and Gents. Sorry it's been a while, I have been having really bad problems with my eczema and skin of late and have had to take a break from the training and fitness stuff. I made the decision after getting in the walker last week and in the end having to come out as the itching round my neck was immense.

I have taken the opportunity to focus on the steering of the walker and think up a way of taking the direction locks off and replacing it with something better. As you might remember the direction locks prevent the front wheels from turning so that I can focus on my walking and not worry about the walker going everywhere while I am in it. Unfortunately my walker had to have a different kind of locks which means that it is always on as opposed to ones that you can turn on and off. This poses a problem when I need to start to turn whilst in the walker as even when I walk in a straight line, the weight of my hips makes the back wheels of the walker slide and therefore turn into my desk. At the moment I feel that I am at a stage where I don't feel that I can do without the direction locks but the inability to turn (and fit through the door as the direction locks stick outside) is hindering my progress.

Here comes the geeky part. I have had an idea with the hope of creating a steering mechanism for my walker, so that it can go straight when it needs to and turn when I need to. They way that I aim to do this is by creating a rack and pinion mechanism on the front of my walker that I can use with a electronic servo, and two buttons to control it with. Basically this is kind of similar to what you might find in your car albeit a much more basic version. I am hoping to use my 3D printer to design and make the parts and, for the tech-savvy amongst you I will be using a Arduino Micro as a logic controller. If all goes well what will happen is I will be able to press a button on the left of the walker and the front wheels will turn left. The longer you press the button the more it will turn.

I mentioned at the very beginning of my blog that I often have crazy ideas, let see if this one pans out.