Its Alive!

This week I finally got the robot working without having to be plugged in for power. I ran in to a couple issues, but the robot is able to drive itself around now. One issue I had was that the breadboard I intended to use wasn't big enough to fit the breakout kit, as well as all the other components, so I had to borrow one from a classmate. I also had trouble trying to fit everything (the two battery packs, raspberry pi, and the larger breadboard) on to the chassis, but managed to pile it all on there using quite a bit of tape.

Right now, the bot is just running a simple demo python script that I wrote which shows the different movements the robot can make. Below is a video of the robot running the script.

I'm having the raspberry pi run the python script as soon as it boots up, which works fine for demoing. However, since I have the script running an endless loop, the script never finishes, so the only way to make the robot stop is to unplug the power from the breadboard. By next week, I hope to have a button hooked up to control the starting/stopping of the script, as well as getting the distance sensors working.

There's Always Something...

The parts that I ordered last week arrived today, so I can start to make more progress on the robot's hardware. Unfortunately, the Micro-USB B end of the cables I ordered have a casing which is just barely too big to plug in through the Pi Box case. It's not a huge deal right now, but I'll either want to make the hole for USB on the Pi Box bigger, or trim down the casing on the cable later on.

Now that I can move forward on the hardware, my goal for next week is to have the bot able to move around (following hard-coded instructions) free of all cable connections. (Although I might still have to manually boot up the Pi and start up the program first, unless I can get a button hooked up too)