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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
Member
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 672
 

@robo-pi

Go to bills video on lidar he totally covers it its actually real easy once you get the tf mini driver from github its pretty much just get distance and I'm pretty sure you don't need the Jetson just an arduino and a 3 volt logic converter look up axiom home built robot some space age wiz kid takes this thing makes it totally ai  hooks up 8266 to now it can be reached from anywhere in the world its just unbelievable uses fusion 360 ultrasonics and recognition camera and he did it with that check it out it'll blow your mind it did mine?


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 
Posted by: @duce-robot

look up axiom home built robot

Is this the dude you are talking about?

Everything he claims his robot can do is already available to you all you need to do is buy those accessories and install them on your robot.   It's not like he invented this stuff.

I don't mean to take anything away from him.  He still went through all the work to actually put one together.  But all that stuff is already on the market.   You can buy it yourself if you've got the dough.   Your Duce robot doesn't appear to be too far behind. ? 

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 

@duce-robot

By the way, the eyes of his robot are just displays for looks.  Dioramas, as you have called them.   You could easily create displays like that for Duce Robot's eyes.  They are just displays, not actual eyes.   The the actual input sensors are most likely things like LIDAR etc.

His robot does seem to have a pretty nice body though.  I wonder if he designed that himself?

The two biggest things that are holding me back from building my robot are,.... Can  you guess?,...

Yep!

Money and time. 

That's what's holding me back.   Especially right now.  I don't have time to build a robot right now.  Maybe this winter hopefully.   Money I can squeak buy on by taking maximum advantage of cheap junk. ? 

But seriously, you can get some  pretty decent stuff at pretty realistic prices nowadays.   In fact that TF mini  you just got is a great example.  That sucker should provide you with more than precise enough sensory input to navigate your robot really well.  It's up to you to do the programming to make that a reality.   The TF mini will do the job.   And that didn't break the bank.

I'll get one for my robot eventually too.  But right now I need to fix my wood boiler.  I just ordered $1500 worth of stainless steel.  So there goes my robot hobby money!   But at least I'll be warm this winter, so no complaints here.

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
Member
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 672
 

@robo-pi

Yes I see what you mean you can buy most of it I do want to use the 8266 to some degree if I can I thought that was neat yes that boiler that ....that you got to have especially when you throw words like winter and ice into the mix but I'm in so fla  it'll probably be 83 at 3 am 100 % humidity in the dead of Jan jus start your project cheapest smallest thing first find in your materials pile the one you have the most of  and use that to its last particle and move on from that be a miser a nibbler that's what gets big projects moving nibble at every day even if it's for ten minutes get r done ? but recycled materials are a must if you find a heap o flat plastic somewhere on the ground snag it if you get lucky you might find enough at one time to build the entire  main cabinet that's the ticket .then you can drag along as  you please filling it . ?


   
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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
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Posts: 672
 

OK pi 4 up and running 2 pi 4 up but no nano yet  2nd pi 3 octoprint I can't wait to see how the pi 4 tie in although I config my ultrasonic sensors a little different I think they should still work and the lidar  although they are all up and putting  out readings just considering how they will tie in to pi 4 and the Jetson   a run down  main board pi 4 plus motor controllers plus sensors both environmental and navigation plus the Jetson for learning plus camera I do not have yet except RPI camera if that will work I do not know tf mini for navigation   it seems a long way off for me with so many tasks yet to even start.??


   
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Spyder
(@spyder)
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Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 846
 

Some interesting and potentially helpful programming tools I've run across...

Blockly for Arduino... If you've ever used MIT's app-inventor, it's a lot like that. You program by plugging things into other things. If it fits into the socket, it will probably work

http://technologiescollege.github.io/Blockly-at-rduino/index.html

Anaconda... Python programming with Jupyter Notebooks

https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/user-guide/getting-started/

Kittenblock... Another Graphical interface for programming. This one is aimed at 1st and 2nd graders, which means that I still haven't figured it out

https://kittenbot-docs-en.readthedocs.io/en/latest/kittenbot/02InstallKittenblock.html

Eclipse... Non graphical IDE. In the ROS class I'm taking, they recommend using this software to edit my programs, probably because it integrates right into your working environment. So you can write the program, and test it on your ROS bot in the same screen. Don't ask me how it works, I have no idea what I'm doing

https://www.eclipse.org/ide/

Oh, I forgot, MIT's App-Inventor... Graphical environment for creating Android apps. I actually used this one to create a small stupid video game, so, if I can do it, it must be an easy one to learn

 
I hope at least one of these helps somebody

   
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Duce robot
(@duce-robot)
Member
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 672
 

While on the subject of programming do you know how to configure dvr8825 stepper drivers for marlin 1.1.9 ? I think max feed rate has to be changed but the settings I found were old and wouldn't work for 1.1.9 thanks for any suggestions?


   
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hybotics
(@hybotics)
Member
Joined: 4 years ago
Posts: 12
 

@robo-pi

I recently acquired a Jetson Nano, but have not had a chance to do much with it. I am not impressed with the version of Ubuntu 18.04 they provide, and some things that are supposed to be there are not there, like Jupyter Notebooks. There must surely be an updated image somewhere, but I have not found anything more current yet. I tried installing the MATE' desktop environment, but could not get it to run in the usual manner. I also have three Raspberry Pi 3 boards and want to get at least one more Raspberry Pi 4.

 

8-Dale

I can handle complexity. It is those simple things that confound me!


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 

@hybotics

Hi Dale, welcome to the Dronebot Worshop forums. ? 

I haven't installed Jupyter Notebook on the Jetson Nano yet.   But I have been using Jupyter Notebook on my notebook compters.  It is a nice tool.

I have several differ OS system cards set up for my Jeston Nanos.  They currently all  have the same OS system on them which is Ubuntu 18.04.  I think it's a special version of  Ubuntu just for the Jetson Nano.   I downloaded the image from NVIDIA.

I'll tell you what I've been doing so far.

I have one system SD Card devoted to Artificial Intelligence lessons that I'm following by Paul McWhorter here:

He wants us to keep that system disk pristine for only his lessons.  I tend to agree that this is a good idea.

I  have a second system SD Card devoted to KiCad v5.1 and Blender v2.79.   In fact, I'm currently working with Blender on the Nano right now.  So far it has been lightening fast and I haven't had any system crashes  or any indication of  trouble.  Of course I haven't drawn any seriously complex stuff  yet, but as fast as it is responding right now I can't imagine it bogging down anytime soon.

Same thing with KiCad.  So far lightening smooth performance with no hesitations at all.  But then again I haven't tried to design an entire motherboard for a computer either. ?  It's unlikely I'll ever be designing anything that complex.  I tend to work in smaller modules anyway.

So thus far it's been a fantastic "desktop" machine.

I have a third system SD Card devoted to Kdenlive (a Video Editor), but I haven't done much with that yet other than to note that Kdenline does launch and appears to be working without any serious problems.  I did render a video with it, and it does take a while to render, but I expected this would be the case.

I just recently discovered that Blender has a video editor built-in as well.  So I may even take a look at what it would be like to use Blender as a video editor.   If I do that I'll install a fresh copy of Blender onto the SD Card dedicated to Video Editing.

I like the idea of having different SD Cards for different purposes.  This way if one system crashes it doesn't take out everything else with it. ? 

I think also the  systems will run faster if kept lean and mean with only software that dedicated to one type of project.

In KiCad I'm currently designing an Micro SD Card Boot Hub.  It will allow me to plug four SD cards into the hub and plug the hub into the Jetson Nano SD card slot.  Then I can easily choose which SD card to boot up from.  Only one SD card can be active at a time, but that's all that's needed for a Boot Hub.

Here's the Schematic and PCB I drew up for the Boot Hub using KiCad on the Jetson Nano:

SD Card New Sch
FrontView 3d

I'm waiting for parts to come in before I can actually build it.

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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hybotics
(@hybotics)
Member
Joined: 4 years ago
Posts: 12
 

@robo-pi

That looks very nice, James! I have both my Jetson Nano and Raspberry Pi 4 running on 128 GB SD cards. I also have one more 128 GB and three 64 GB cards unassigned at present. I want to try a 256 GB card as soon as I can afford it. I have not gotten into PCB design yet, but I have designed some circuits in school, and this is definitely on my must-learn list. Right now, I am concentrating on my two small robots.

 

8-Dale

I can handle complexity. It is those simple things that confound me!


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 

@hybotics

Currently I'm using all 64GB SD system cards.   The main reason for this is because I don't want to have to be backing up 128GB or more system images that are basically 90% unused space.    It already takes up a lot of space just to back up a 64GB system on a hard drive.   And most of that space is even unused.

The other thing is that I don't use the main system SD card to save large data files on.  Instead I save data out a USB port to a USB stick or an external Hard Drive.   So the only thing on the system disk is basically the software only.

Another thing also, is that if you have a ton of data on your system SD Card that can actually slow the system down, even though the data is just sitting there doing nothing.  So I try to keep my system SD Cards lean and mean. ? 

In fact, I'm looking at my nano system card right now.  This card has KiCad installed, and Blender.  It also has several data files as I haven't yet moved them to a  USB stick or Cloud drive.

The system disk says, 41.7 GB/62.9 GB available.   In other words, so far with both KiCad and Blender along with some data files I'm only using 21.2 GB of space..  I wish there was a way to just back up the 21.2 GB  image system instead of having to back up the whole SD card.  That would cut the backup space and time required by a third.

So currently I just don't see the need for having large capacity SD cards.  Unless you are planning on installing extremely large applications, or storing a ton of data on them.

I'm not going to move up to 128GB cards until I see a real need for it.  Thus far I haven't  even come close to that.   Although if I tried to load all this software onto one  system SD card, then yes, I could start running  out of space.  Yet another reason for the SD Card Boot Hub.  ?  I'd rather have four smaller SD cards than one huge one.  If something goes wrong with the huge one you lose everything at once.

So that's my strategy with these little Jetson Nanos.  Keep everything as lean and mean as possible.

In fact, I've been looking for a way to clone one SD card directly over to another one so I can  make backups without having to first save the image file onto a disk.  I haven't been able to find a way to clone SD card directly to SD card yet.  That might be another PCB project to work on.  I guess I'll have to invent a Micro SD card Cloning machine.

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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egers
(@egers)
Member
Joined: 4 years ago
Posts: 27
 
Posted by: @robo-pi

In fact, I've been looking for a way to clone one SD card directly over to another one so I can  make backups without having to first save the image file onto a disk.  I haven't been able to find a way to clone SD card directly to SD card yet.  That might be another PCB project to work on.  I guess I'll have to invent a Micro SD card Cloning machine.

Raspberry pi's come with  sd card copier software preinstalled. You just choose which card ( or usb stick) you want to copy from and which one you want to copy too. It then copies all the data on the chosen drive onto the other one. If you put the 2 sd card's you want to copy to and from into a rpi you can just copy all the data from one onto the other.

Hope this helps ? 


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 
Posted by: @egers

Hope this helps

I don't think it will because copying data is not the same as making a cloned image file. 

I've been using Win32Diskimager and BelenaEtcher.  However, both of those programs will only write an SD card image to a file, and then back from the file as an image.

I haven't yet found anything that will read and write actual images directly from one SD card to another. Even if you save a system image file from one SD card to another, I don't think that image file would boot.  It's just a file with the extension *.img.    It's not a direct clone of the original  SD card.  It's a file.

Trust me, I've been all over the Internet asking for how to do this and people keep pointing me to Win32Diskimager or BelenaEtcher.  But neither of those will do what I want.  So apparently they aren't understanding what I'm actually hoping to do.

Either this, or they give me the disgusting, "Why would you want to do that?", reply. ? 

I want to do it so I don't need to save it as a file first.   The way things are now I need to do it twice.  Once to save it as a file, and then again to flash the file back onto the SD card.   I want to be able to do it in one fell swoop.  Just clone one  SD card directly onto another SD card with no intermediate img file.  Saves a lot of time and there's also no need to save a 64GB file on the hard drive every time.

So I just want SD card to SD card direct.  Not just data transfer, but actual cloning.

I actually have a SATA  drive cloning dock here.  So I can clone hard drives directly from one to the other.  But it won't  so SD Cards.

I wonder if there is a SD card-to-SATA  adapter?   I never thought to search for something like that.  That might solve my problem if it exists.

UPDATE:  Just looked one up!

They do make SD card to SATA adapters!  I never thought of that.

This might solve my problem since I already  have a SATA drive cloning dock.

I'll be looking into this for sure!

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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frogandtoad
(@frogandtoad)
Member
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1458
 

@robo-pi

Blender not only has a (basic) video editor, but also offers 3D material painting, sculpting, drawing via the grease pencil, in which can be converted and animated, let alone a physics engine that is used by Engineers and Scientist alike.

It's one of the best open source and FREE pieces of software available today, without question!

 


   
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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
Robotics Engineer
Joined: 5 years ago
Posts: 1669
 
Posted by: @frogandtoad

It's one of the best open source and FREE pieces of software available today, without question!

I BELIEVE IT!

I'm impressed to be sure.

Although I haven't tried the video editor yet.  Still just learning how to model things in 3D.

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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