JetBot - Anyone done any work on this toy?

I haven't worked with it but I have to say it LOOKS impressive as hell 🙂

Another channel has this video of a similar setup

@will 

Thanks!  Yes I have watched that video.  I enjoy his short videos on almost every subject he discusses, but get more meat out of the Dronebot Workshop and TopTechBoy videos.

@codecage 

I watch every episode from both of both DBWS and EC channels, but I download and keep each one of Bill's and only an occasional one of Chris'.

I haven't seen anything by TopTechBoy, but I'm off to check him out now, thanks.

Looks like it would make a great platform for learning how to use ROS using the Python language and playing with these trainable pattern recognition networks.

It is not the kind of robot that interests me beyond the above but I will not hijack this thread with my reasons.

Wish there were others looking into the JetBot, as right now I've just started and have hit a brick wall just after powering it up and setting up WiFi, but can't connect to it from the browser on my PC.

Just in case anyone is interested could you take a look at the software setup from this LINK

Take a look at "Step 4."  Line 3 in that step reads "Power the JetBot from the USB battery pack by plugging in the micro-USB cable."  For the life of me that makes entirely no sense.  We just unplugged the micro-USB power cable from the wall wart, and now they are saying power the JetBot from the USB battery pack!  Huh?  Maybe it's just terrible translation from Chinese to English.

Any thoughts?  The JetBot powers up OK, from any of its three sources.  The three 18650 batteries, the 12.5V barrel connector from a wall wart, or the 5V micro-USB from a wall wart.  Although the 5V supply would not be able to drive much more than the Jetxon Nano itself.  Plus being tethered by a power cord is not much use from either of the wall warts.

@codecage Steve, I built the JetBot last year and was successful in getting it to run around, but not much  else (my fault - moved on to other projects).  Let me look at the link later today (son and his wife are in town today).

@huckohio 

Thanks!  It boots up fine, but even though I can see the IP address it obtained via DHCP on the small display, I can't connect to it remotely.  I can connect to localhost:8888, so I know the webserver is running.  And from the Jetson hooked to a HDMI monitor, keyboard, and mouse I can get to the Internet just fine.  It's almost like there is a firewall rule on the Jetson not allowing an incoming connection.  In fact from my laptop, I can't even ping the JetBot, but from the Jetbot I can ping my laptop!

@codecage Quick question.  In Bill's last video he had a teaser on the new robot project and promised more in the upcoming newsletter.  Have you seen a newsletter recently?  I can't remember the last one I received.

@huckohio 

That was a teaser that hasn't come to be that is for sure.  So far I haven't seen the newsletter he referred to.

And an update on my 'ping' capability.  I can ping the IP address of my network connected laser printer, but I can't ping my Window Laptop from the JetBot.  Also my Linux workstation, while it can ping the same printer, can't ping the JetBot or my laptop.  Really quite strange to me.

@codecage How far did you get in the User Guide WRT the WiFi?  Step 4?  Is the JetBot IP address displayed on the OLED display?

@huckohio 

Yes it is displayed on the OLED display.  That hasn't been an issue.  I'm convinced I have some strange issue with my network.  Not sure what at the moment as I've never had issues in the past connecting to anything I want to on my home network.  From my laptop using an IP Scanner, Angry IP Scanner in this case, I have been unable to see the JetBot, up until just now as I took a break from typing this response.  This time the IP address was discovered and I was successful connecting to the JetBot Jupyter Notebook.  I was also successful connecting to the JetBot from my Linux workstation this morning, although I was not able to do that before.  I did notice the ping times did seem to be quite a bit higher than I would have expected.  The JetBot is just a few feet from an AP, so I'm beginning to suspect maybe a flakey wireless adapter in the JetBot.  Needless to say, rather strange goings on.

Now to disconnect from the wires and see if I can work my through the demo programs.

@huckohio

When I tried the basic motion portion of the test code I got no movement out of the car.  But interestingly enough, using the game controller I got some movement.  Not sure it was correct, but movement none the less.

I really don't want to rely on my computer to have to control of the JetBot, but maybe if I work through all the things on the Juypter NoteBooks, it will be become obvious how to go about this.

@codecage I remember that I had a similar problem.  When working through the Juypter Notebook I must have changed the speed to 0.  I created a new SD card and started over.  It worked, but the speed was incredibly fast.  Too fast.  I also fund the loading the images for learning what was "open" versus "closed" space didn't work very well unless you added around 100 images.  I was testing in a small room -  there wasn't enough angles available to get 100 pictures.