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0 pointsTaylorAlexander6y ago0 comments

Thank you! It’s certainly an involved project. I recommend starting by building one motor and gearbox assembly and getting control working from python. If you can get that far you can build the rest!

And the website you linked looks nice. There is also hackster.io and hackaday.io. While those sites are fine, it becomes one more thing to update. I prefer imgur for simple photo albums as that integrates well with reddit, my primary promotional place. Imgur actually works really well for me there. And then my real build updates are on my YouTube channel. And I have my own website where I try to throw everything.

So I end up trying to funnel people to my website and just using whatever media hosting makes sense for that particular media.

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StavrosK6y ago

That makes sense, thanks! Regarding the build, I didn't see any information regarding the control system on the material I saw, but I probably wouldn't want to make it as autonomous as you have. I'd probably connect an ESP8266 as the controller and a receiver for my RC radio and control it that way.

Out of curiosity, is there more detailed information about the controller somewhere?

TaylorAlexanderOP6y ago

Well do you mean the motor controller, the control computer, or the remote control?

I’ve got some info on the motor controllers I’m using: https://reboot.love/t/vesc-mods-for-robotics-use/

The control computer is a raspberry pi running python. It looks like I’ve not committed the code in a while, but this repo may be helpful: https://github.com/tlalexander/rover_control

Though for the above, I’ve recently found that I can use velocity control on the VESC, which is easier than doing velocity control on the Pi as I had done in that repo.

For the wireless remote control I use, it’s my own design and they’re not for sale or well documented. I’d recommend any wireless controller that you can read in python.

The software should be pretty simple now that I’ve switched to velocity control mode. You just need to read a joystick and convert that to velocity commands for each VESC. Technically even the VESCs could do that onboard if you wanted to modify the firmware.

But if you can drive the VESC from an esp32 that would work too.

StavrosK6y ago

Oh huh, that's pretty involved, thanks. Can I ask why you rolled your own instead of using off the shelf RC components, like what is used in RC cars, for example? For the remote control and ESC, at least, it seems like it would be simpler.

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0 pointsTaylorAlexander6y ago0 comments

So I end up trying to funnel people to my website and just using whatever media hosting makes sense for that particular media.

0 comments

StavrosK6y ago

Out of curiosity, is there more detailed information about the controller somewhere?

TaylorAlexanderOP6y ago

Well do you mean the motor controller, the control computer, or the remote control?

I’ve got some info on the motor controllers I’m using: https://reboot.love/t/vesc-mods-for-robotics-use/

The control computer is a raspberry pi running python. It looks like I’ve not committed the code in a while, but this repo may be helpful: https://github.com/tlalexander/rover_control

Though for the above, I’ve recently found that I can use velocity control on the VESC, which is easier than doing velocity control on the Pi as I had done in that repo.

For the wireless remote control I use, it’s my own design and they’re not for sale or well documented. I’d recommend any wireless controller that you can read in python.

But if you can drive the VESC from an esp32 that would work too.

StavrosK6y ago

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