Notifications
Clear all
Robot Projects
7
Posts
3
Users
4
Likes
633
Views
Topic starter
2022-10-24 2:34 pm
History:
Andy was originally manufactured by Axlon Games, in Sunvale CA, in the early to mid 80. Andy's head was acquired by Axlon Games from a company that manufactured Topo, I can't remember the company's name off hand. Andy was a remote controlled toy that was controlled by a home, Apple or Atari, computer. I acquire Andy about 1984, along with some other R/C toys, at a liquidation sale in San Jose.
Recently, after reading an this article posted on DroneBot Workshop, I decided to give Andy new life. So far I've prototyped the basic electronics and took Andy for a test drive. More to come.
This topic was modified 1 year ago by mtp5150
DroneBot Workshop reacted
2022-10-25 9:02 pm
I see Andy can be controlled by a c64 or a Atari computer via a wireless connection?
So is the revised version remote controlled by a computer program?
Topic starter
2022-10-27 2:00 pm
Andy was originally manufactured with a wired connection. On the Atari 800 it plugged in to one of four game controller ports. With my upgrade, following this article https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32cam-robot-car/%C2%A0, Andy is WiFi controlled via a HTTP interface including onboard streaming video through an ESP32CAM board.
2022-10-27 3:55 pm
I bought an ESP32-CAM and the FTDI adapter a couple of weeks ago. My version of the Arduino IDE didn't have the A-Thinker ESP32-CAM example so I haven't actually done anything with it so far.
My reference was,
https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32-cam-intro/
Your reference actually resulted in a 404 error because of the %C2%A0 part,
https://dronebotworkshop.com/esp32cam-robot-car/
A heavy duty project! Maybe one day I will find time to give it a go.
mtp5150 reacted
2022-10-27 4:28 pm
@robotbuilder The esp32cam example can be difficult to find, it's under Samples but then ESP32/Camera/CameraWebServer. I assume the prerequisite steps are done but I will include for completeness for other readers. The pics are in order of the steps that must be followed. The last picture means select ESP32 in the left menu so that the fly out menu then contains Camera.
First computer 1959. Retired from my own computer company 2004.
Hardware - Expert in 1401, and 360, fairly knowledge in PC plus numerous MPU's and MCU's
Major Languages - Machine language, 360 Macro Assembler, Intel Assembler, PL/I and PL1, Pascal, Basic, C plus numerous job control and scripting languages.
Sure you can learn to be a programmer, it will take the same amount of time for me to learn to be a Doctor.
mtp5150 reacted
Topic starter
2022-10-28 2:35 am
Thank you for correcting my link, not sure what happened there something went bad in the cut/paste operation.
No, it wasn't a heavy duty project, to this point. The prototyping was completed in one evening, including tear down of the original electronics and the need to disassemble, lubricate, and reassemble the 40 year old transmission. So far the hardest part is trying to decide what I want to accomplish in this project. A simple remote control robot or something more(ie: full autonomy or somewhere in between.)
I see Ron,@zander, has given you some tips on programming the ESP32CAM. The one tip I can give you from my experience is that on my clone ESP32CAM boards the two(2) ground pins on the board are NOT common grounds. On my clone versions the FTDI only works with one of the ground pins and not the other. I beat my head against my monitor for hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, until I connected the FTDI to the other ground pin.
2022-10-28 2:46 am
Bill's article seemed heavy duty to me 🙂 I am not sure if I will ever get around to using the ESP32-CAM but will book mark this thread just in case so thanks for the grounding tip.
For inspiration maybe you could look at what some of the toy robots now available can do.
Today I was reading in the Silicon Chip magazine a page on building an ESP32-camera sentry with object recognition via TensorFlow.
mtp5150 reacted