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Topic starter
2026-07-28 6:28 am
https://forum.dronebotworkshop.com/project-help/my-first-robot/paged/3/#post-52892
@byron wrote:
And an aside, I give a hovercraft link as a base for converting to a controllable bot , not for @lee-g as of no use without a 3d printer, but you never know, bot collectors know no bounds. 😎 Perhaps it's an alternative for @robotbuilder who endeavours to hurtle wooden stools about the place. 🤠
Well I don't hurtle a wooden stool about it moves at the same speed as most robot vacuum cleaners because I am using motorized encoder wheels from those robots along with their battery and battery charging circuit. And it no longer looks like a stool for it has to carry a laptop as the controller.
Hovercraft were a novelty when they first came out but they were very noisy, blew dust everywhere and needed a fairly flat surface.
https://forum.dronebotworkshop.com/project-help/feel-the-power/#post-52891
@byron wrote:
Perhaps @robotbuilder may consider similarly putting his many robot code exhibits into github as well, as it's much easier to follow the progress.
It has been a many decades of "progress" !!
It is just something I have liked to think about and experiment with now and then over many years as an adjunct to my early interest in electronics and later coding with an intense interest in how things work and intelligent autonomous machines.
I haven't really done much since my last post 2 months ago with the target beacons.
https://forum.dronebotworkshop.com/user-robot-projects/visually-controlled-robot-progress/#post-52780
Just have to get motivated again to overcome my brain fatigue and get back in the flow.
I know people like videos of robots in action so I will have to figure out how I can do that without giving away my personal details to some provider of such things. The other issue was my wife doesn't want a tour of her house online.
2026-07-28 11:43 am
@robotbuilder Its good to have periodic rests, and glad to hear your still at it. As for videos, have you considers creating your own youtube and putting your videos on there. Its free, and now I know how to view without getting the intrusive ads. It could be just the thing to watch over lunch. 😀 Only you and your wife will know who's house is in the video, but wives can get bees in their bonnet that are hard to squash.
But how about making the wooden stool more versatile by running with a raspberry pi connected via wifi to a screen share on your desk laptop. Raspberry Pi provide rpi Connect to make this easy or the likes of vnc work well. Then you could take it outside to have it run around the garden. We could admire your flowers. Very nice. 😎
2026-07-28 11:44 am
I remember you base a lot of your designs on your familiarity of robot vacuum cleaners. I must have had a "dumb" cleaner as its random zig-zag patterns only fascinated me for a short time. It kept getting stuck under the sofa or some location and not being able to return home. Having to go searching for it wore the new off it pretty quick. 😉
Have you seen one of the newer robot lawn mowers in action?
I always thought they were toys because, how can you mow with less than 3HP in a push, much less a riding mower with 25HP. I finally broke down and got one. I wish these were around when I got my 25HP zero-turn mower. This thing does 10x better job, doesn't tear up the hills, is quiet and after some tweaking on zones, its fire and forget. It has Bluetooth, WiFi and Cell access. It uses the RTK version of GPS and it does seem to have centimeter accuracy. 100 meter stretches on my property are dead strait even over a hilly, ex-horse pasture terrain. It has VSLAM vision to go around obstacles (not mowing my wife's flowers is life saving). It finds home and re-charges and continues where it left off and has a head-light and works through the night.
Wife, christened him Chester.
Inq
2026-07-28 12:26 pm
@inq Thats a good idea, should be better than a roving wooden stool for outside adventures. If @robotbuilder is minded to go this route, I give a link to a diy robot lawnmower, so cut the grass as well as making youtube video's. The wife could not complain about garden pictures showing a manicured lawn. https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Robot-Lawnmower/
Topic starter
2026-07-28 5:36 pm
@byron
Its good to have periodic rests, and glad to hear your still at it.
These rest periods have been of long duration sometimes years!
@inq
I must have had a "dumb" cleaner as its random zig-zag patterns only fascinated me for a short time. It kept getting stuck under the sofa or some location and not being able to return home. Having to go searching for it wore the new off it pretty quick. 😉
They have advanced a long way since then.
Have you seen one of the newer robot lawn mowers in action?
Not in real life only in videos. I see them in hardware shops and even along side house vacuum cleaner robots. I had thought they would make a good outdoor robot base. I do have a lawn but would like to get rid of it although it is good exercise mowing it myself. My other interest is nature. A paddock full of a variety of wild plants makes for a good wild life habitat. I find a natural garden landscape much more enjoyable.
I remember thinking about how to build a lawn rover to detect and remove dog droppings. Not nice to tread on one when dog owners slacken off on their poop patrol. This one connects to the cloud for AI vision and uses a camera. Another method uses a drone to visually locate and remove the offending item.
2026-07-28 7:45 pm
I do have a lawn but would like to get rid of it
🤣 I know exactly what you mean! I keep begging the wife to find some ground cover that takes care of itself.
Topic starter
2026-07-29 7:42 pm
@inq Thats a good idea, should be better than a roving wooden stool for outside adventures. If @robotbuilder is minded to go this route, I give a link to a diy robot lawnmower, so cut the grass as well as making youtube video's. The wife could not complain about garden pictures showing a manicured lawn. https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Robot-Lawnmower/
The avatar image I use was an outdoor robot. It was very strong and I had thought of modifying it as a motorized wheel barrow. Unfortunately one of the 24v windscreen wipers leaked oil and gave out.
The example you give is a remote control which isn't my thing as I was interested in autonomous robots. But all those ideas were over a decade ago and now I am older I just don't have much time left (life) to develop a working robot of that type. I used to run the family citrus and vine property and often dreamed on building farm worker robots. They are now becoming part of farming for all sorts of jobs.
Yesterday I did see a powered wheel chair for sale AU$200 without batteries and was tempted. They come with all the basic parts needed such as motor controllers (toggle stick) to control the motors. Just a matter of adding sensors and connecting its "brain" to the motor controller.
The hard part of useful robots is software although that is what interests me most and the expensive part is hardware.
By the way you wouldn't want a modified petrol driven lawn mower on the loose!! They instead have gentler low powered robot lawn mowers which essentially give your lawn a light haircut on a regular basis.
On the brain fatigue part when it comes to computer languages I have tried most of them but really my brain is tuned to BASIC and C++ (lovely language). I have learned the basics of Python out of necessity but any suggestion it is like BASIC is nonsense.
2026-07-29 10:15 pm
Well quite agree theres no point in branching out with do stuff in Python when you are comfortable with BASIC and C++.
And if the time comes for a new mower then it would be a battery powered one for me, robot or human driven. Almost all of my gardening tools are battery powered.
And all my robots (well 1 robot) can be powered with a ryobi battery with this handy add on that has usb A and C outlets. I've had one for a couple of years, powers the bot for ages. Might be good for your wooden stall, but a bit heavy for a dinky bot.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/127734599195
Topic starter
2026-07-29 11:24 pm
Well quite agree theres no point in branching out with do stuff in Python when you are comfortable with BASIC and C++.
Oh I do stuff in Python. When in Rome ... You need to share code and Python is the popular choice. It is easy to use and so well supported you can do just about anything with it without having to be a coding guru.
It is about algorithms not the language. I used to get code (algorithms) working in BASIC on the first home computers and then translate down to Assembler for speed.
Yes I have and will use those plug in batteries. I don't do dinky bots. I like an easy to use software development environment only offered by a PC or RPi.
2026-07-30 7:18 am
I like an easy to use software development environment only offered by a PC or RPi.
That comment appears to indicate theres some other choice. Surely all code is produced on a pc (and a rpi is just a variety of a pc as is my mac). There have been other computers in the past like the BBC mico and Sinclair zdx80 etc where software was developed directly on those micro computers, but those days are long gone. So I don't follow what you mean by that remark.
When in Rome ... You need to share code and Python is the popular choice
I don't doubt that python is popular, but Rome in this context is this forum where the vast majority of code pasted up has been Arduino c++, so I would presume that c++ would be a good choice within these hallowed walls. I do agree that generally for sharing algorithm examples python is a good choice as its more easily readable and I see you were putting up some interesting code examples using OpenCV. But readable though python is, one still has to know python to follow, which may limit your audience on this forum.
Topic starter
2026-07-30 9:47 am
"... this forum where the vast majority of code pasted up has been Arduino c++, so I would presume that c++ would be a good choice within these hallowed walls."
Sure because the vast majority of projects here are small robots that avoid or follow walls or other simpler but useful and practical electronic projects but for higher level processing in a robot you need more computing power.
Although microcontrollers have come a long way over the last 7 year and most posts now use the ESP32 in their projects doesn't mean we can't have RPi projects.
These small robots, like a self balancing robot, are a great way to learn how to program hardware to do amazing stuff a bit like the cerebellum that @inq mentioned or maybe the spinal cord of a walking, jumping robot however all these low level functions in a more intelligent robot are modulated by higher level processing.
To see where I am coming from let's go back to where I came in 7 years ago.
Bill had plans to build a REAL robot and that was my interest at the time.
The high level stuff was assigned to a RPi and the low level stuff to a Mega2560 and that is where I started. The reason I am using a PC is because unlike the RPi there is no steep learning curve for me and I can get on with actually playing with code. I still use a microcontroller with its own motor/sensor code to interface the PC to the hardware.
So I have used Arduino C++ to control the motors and read sensors but higher level processing needs more power (speed and memory) although the reflex stuff is best handled by interrupts or fast loop on a microcontroller.
2026-07-30 10:22 am
@ robotbuilder
The computer you choose to control your robot, pc rpi or whatever, that you choose to program for 'high-level stuff' does not constrain you as to which programming language you choose. Python, c++ or whatever, so I don't follow your logic for Python being a necessity, though from a personal point of view I think its desirable.
I would agree that theres a good case for using a combination of microcontrollers and computers to control a bot. The computer would work just a well on or off the bot if a suitable communication link is established. If the computer is to be on the bot then It does seem to be somewhat easier to have a smaller computer actually residing on a roving bot, so a mini pc or rpi is a good choice with a suitable battery. But I not suggesting a larger laptop with its own battery would be a bad way to go, quite a good choice for a wooden stool I think.
Whatever you choose it can be programmed remotely from a desktop pc, or from a laptop whilst you sit is a comfy chair, or indeed program the laptop and than connect it to the bot. But whats all that got to do with a choice of programming language to which my previous post alluded to.
Anyway I don't have any beef in how you post your algorithms in c++ or Python or basic, I just didn't follow your logic when you suggested you had to use python for sharing your code.
Keep coding 😀
Topic starter
2026-07-30 11:26 am
... so I don't follow your logic for Python being a necessity,
It was a necessity for ME because there was so much Python code I had to read and I also wanted to be able to provide Python versions of my code for those that used it as their main or even only computer language.
I also liked using the Processing language which I found easier to read. I think it is compiled to Java code. It was designed to support images and video processing with its Arduino style IDE.
Whatever you choose it can be programmed remotely from a desktop pc, or from a laptop whilst you sit is a comfy chair, or indeed program the laptop and then connect it to the bot.
Yes I do that as I posted elsewhere I am using AnyDesk. I can control and program the robot even if it is another room and of course see what the camera sees from the office as I move the robot about the house.
Now if I can only overcome this brain fatigue!!
2026-07-30 11:35 am
These small robots, like a self balancing robot, are a great way to learn how to program hardware to do amazing stuff a bit like the cerebellum that @inq mentioned or maybe the spinal cord of a walking, jumping robot however all these low level functions in a more intelligent robot are modulated by higher level processing.
I completely agree with your post @robotbuilder. I certainly didn't want to sound like I know anything about the biological brain. I just used AI to ask what part of the brain handles balance and muscle control. I'll try to continue using the brain as a metaphor for Inqster, but my rational for that is to illustrate that the human brain has different portions that handle things complete independently. We don't think about beating our heart, digesting our food, or the mechanics of vision. I plan to use that model for my robots. I'll use the ESP32-S3 for motion and balance and maybe for some obstacle avoidance at the wheel height, but I'll use other micro-controllers for other duties, but on top of that, I'll use a RasPi to act as Cerebral Cortex.
In that vein of segregated functionality... do I recall that you (@robotbuilder) did a lot with vision recognition. At some point I'd like to try that. Seeing that Tesla and now Volvo and others are going away from LIDAR and strictly using cameras. I was brain-storming that if I used two of the ESP32-S3-CAM boards with the higher resolution OV3660 cameras, I could do much of the object recognition on the independent S3's and pass those data streams (of objects, not pixels) to the RasPi, it would only have to process the binocular vision portion to get spatial awareness... and then continue to do the higher order things with that information.
Python, c++ or whatever, so I don't follow your logic for Python being a necessity, though from a personal point of view I think its desirable.
This summer I turn 65 and here in North Carolina, USA, they let me go to state universities for free. This summer I went to the local university for Fall Semester orientation and talked to professors of the two classes I'm going to take (Physics and Artificial Intelligence). Anyway the AI professor's only concern was my lack of Python experience. I told him, I'll take care of that, but it brought home to me I might as well been talking Greek if I use C/C++. The point being, I think @robotbuilder is coming from is that academia LOVES Python and much of everything being done in AI starts with at-least prototyping in Python. Yes, it may get ported to C/C++/Assembler where speed is needed, but for now, Python is the language of AI people communicating with each other.
Yesterday I did see a powered wheel chair for sale AU$200 without batteries and was tempted. They come with all the basic parts needed such as motor controllers (toggle stick) to control the motors. Just a matter of adding sensors and connecting its "brain" to the motor controller.
I'm renovating my house with 36 inch wide doors just so (some day) I can drive a motorized wheel chair around... I'd have latched on to that deal in a heartbeat! 😉
2026-07-30 12:13 pm
Now if I can only overcome this brain fatigue!!
One of the things that AgeUK suggests for keeping the thinking skill healthy in later life is to learn a new language even when a bit ancient. I would think that learning a computer language would be just as good. The verbal bit of learning a spoken language will be the amount of cussing you will do on yet another traceback error. Theres an awful lot of python to learn past the basics, and I don't hope to be a python expert ever, and still find much to learn after playing with it for 10 years or so as a retired hobby programmer.
So maybe you could see off the brain fatigue by going into much greater depth with your python skills. First up, have you mastered the asyncio module yet? Oh there's lots more to get to grips with.
@inq is surly keeping his bonce in a healthy state by learning python, so you will have an audience of at least 2 in this forum to mull over your python algorithms. 😀
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