Mecanum wheels can be erratic.

Hi all,

  In the interests of "accuracy", according to font of all contemporary knowledge, Wikipedia, the character Frankenstein was a young 'scientist', not the monster he is reputed to have created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

Furthermore, as per Wikipedia, the original novel did not directly involve dead bodies  or electricity ... that is a 1930s American film addition.

Wikipedia says :"Frankenstein spends two years painstakingly constructing the Creature's body (one anatomical feature at a time, from raw materials supplied by "the dissecting room and the slaughter-house"), which he then brings to life using his unspecified process. "

Sweet programming dreams. Dave 😀 

@inq Agreed. I picked up a pair of esp32-c3, and a couple pairs of esp32-s3. One pair N8R2 the other N16R8 (the N8R2 was a boo boo on my part)

N is Flash, R is RAM (PSRAM)

Posted by: @inq

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If you use web-sockets with the web server, its connection is made once and you have basically full speed TCP/IP with no noticeable latency. 

I didn't get time to really look at your video until this evening, and, yes, it's very responsive.  I know nothing at all about web-sockets, but lack of knowledge can be fixed.  And I've already shown that I'm adept at stealing other people's code.   😎   What can you tell me or show me about web-sockets that would make it easy for me to adopt them for my little toy robot?  I'm sure I can do some searches and learn about them.

Posted by: @inq

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I'd rather save my time and money and just buy an ESP32-S3 board at $7 and use the Arduino IDE with board libraries

Is the ESP32-S3 the same ESP32 that I see all over Amazon?  Has it changed at all over the past few years?  I have a couple of ESP32 boards that I bought a couple of years ago for a project that never came to fruition. They look just like the boards that I see on Amazon, but I don't know if there have been updates to the product since the time that I bought these.  

Nothing beats the RC controller you mentioned with the nice tactile joysticks and Bill has done a video on integrating one into an Arduino project.

Web sockets requires coding both the server and client.  As you've already learned, the server hosts the files and the HTML/CSS/JPG and JavaScript files are just included on the webpage analogous to #includes in INO/C++.  The server side INO/C++ Sketch will need to respond to the requests and set up the socket to the client.  

Doing a search for "Arduino WebSockets" in Google or probably in the IDE Manage Libraries will probably get you many pre-made libraries for your Arduino.  Hopefully, they would include the JavaScript snippets you need.  If you run into hurdles, and you detail the issue, I probably can point you in the right direction.  

As a last resort, you can always just use my library that I use for that bot and the one I'm doing now and several other IoT type projects like a weather station.  The first problem with that route, is I don't open source my source code on the server side, so you couldn't dig into it to learn those programming techniques.  The binary library is in the Arduino repository is free, royalty free and has extensive on-line and context sensitive help.  The second issue... it ONLY works on ESP8266 devices.  It doesn't even work on ESP32.  

Good luck.

Posted by: @jimgilliland

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Posted by: @inq

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I'd rather save my time and money and just buy an ESP32-S3 board at $7 and use the Arduino IDE with board libraries

Is the ESP32-S3 the same ESP32 that I see all over Amazon?  Has it changed at all over the past few years?  I have a couple of ESP32 boards that I bought a couple of years ago for a project that never came to fruition. They look just like the boards that I see on Amazon, but I don't know if there have been updates to the product since the time that I bought these.  

I'm sure they'll still work.  I have some of the old/original ESP32 and several ESP32-CAM.  Of course the newer S3 models are better, faster, more memory than the older models.  But they all program basically the same way and most Arduino code will compile with varying degrees of compatibility.  Having been around for so long, there is tons of info available on the Internet. @zander is far more expert on everything ESP32.  

Posted by: @inq

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Nothing beats the RC controller you mentioned with the nice tactile joysticks and Bill has done a video on integrating one into an Arduino project.

Doing a search for "Arduino WebSockets" in Google or probably in the IDE Manage Libraries will probably get you many pre-made libraries for your Arduino.

Thank you again for your always valuable advice.  I think your first sentence provides your top recommendation, and if I want to play with this with my grandkids, it may be the most practical.  I can't do either of them today or tomorrow, so I will proceed with the simple web UI that I have now, and then I can explore the idea of using an RC controller.  In fact, I think I have one in my tinkering box left over from an old car that I took apart.  I might even be able to use the radio receiver that was in the car.  I was planning to find a use for it eventually, so maybe this will be my chance.

I still like the idea of learning more about websockets, but I don't need to make that my priority.  

Jim

Posted by: @inq

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I'm sure they'll still work.  I have some of the old/original ESP32 and several ESP32-CAM.  Of course the newer S3 models are better, faster, more memory than the older models.  But they all program basically the same way and most Arduino code will compile with varying degrees of compatibility.  Having been around for so long, there is tons of info available on the Internet. @zander is far more expert on everything ESP32.  

Good, thanks.  That answers my question - the S3 is a newer version than the ones that I have.  So I can use these or spend a few bucks for the newer version.  Maybe Ron will chime in, too.   I don't really have a specific project in mind unless I decide to redo this one with the ESP32.  You mentioned that there were probably Web-socket libraries for my board, but as we've already seen Arduino doesn't appear to have completed all the libraries for this new board.   It wouldn't be very hard to swap controllers (famous last words  😆 ).  

I think I also have a couple of 8266s in my microcontroller drawer.  And some nanos and a couple of Picos that I picked up at Microcenter a few weeks ago.  So I seem to have a lot of choices.  

The manager at my local Microcenter seems to like me.  When I was there the other day, he brought out a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W for me, even though I hadn't asked for one.  They are in very short supply at present, and the store usually sells them out as soon as they arrive.  So far, all I've done with it is to install the OS, but I'm hoping to use it to help demonstrate my homemade breadboard computer.  Kinda ridiculous to use a processor that is roughly a million times more powerful than my homemade computer, but the point of the homemade computer isn't to perform practical work anyway - it's to learn and demonstrate how computers work at the lowest levels.  But that's a topic for another thread.  🙂

@jimgilliland I recently got a pair of the C3's and 4 of the S3's. 2 of the S3's are N8R2 while the other pair are N16R8.

I haven't done anything with these yet since between the move, poor health, and now learning CAD, plus, I will be severely distracted next week with a new 3D printer to play with.

I am considering using one of the ESP32-S3 N16R8 as a general-purpose supervisor for lots of little tasks. I will be taking advantage of the 16MB of flash and 8MB of PSRAM to use the same named double-linked lists to manage everything like I did on the DJ ticker plants. I will also use the ESP tasking facilities. Fortunatly FreeRTOS is pre-emptive multitasking like the OS I used for the ticker plants so I know how and why to use that ability. MUCH better than the co-operative multitasking that Windows and others use.

Hey, sorry, I disappeared for a while after this conversation.  I did let my grandson play with the little robot, and he liked it a lot.  

Later I revised it to be driven with a PS3 controller using an ESP32, and that worked much better.  Bill's video on that subject was very helpful once again.  But the library that Bill referenced hasn't been updated to work with the S3, a fact I learned the hard way.  Fortunately, I had a couple of older ESP32s around, so I was able to get it working. I also added some flashing lights and a siren.

I think the video predated the S3, so it's not surprising that it didn't mention that fact.  Or maybe it did, and I slept through it.  I'm an old guy so I get sleepy a lot.  🙂

Later I got the idea that I could control it without a joystick just by using the accelerometer in the PS3 controller, and that worked even better.  All 4 of my grandkids liked that version, though the youngest one mostly liked to pull out the wires.  🙂

Anyway, I'm about done with that one for now, and I was thinking about building another, but I'll start a new thread for that.