blog/archive/2019/06/06.rss

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
   2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from June 2019</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from June 2019</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>The space rover coquine, or how I ended up on the dark side of the moon</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_space_rover_coquine__or_how_I_ended_up_on_the_dark_side_of_the_moon.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_space_rover_coquine__or_how_I_ended_up_on_the_dark_side_of_the_moon.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sun, 2 Jun 2019 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back a college and friend from Debian and the Skolelinux /
  15 Debian Edu project approached me, asking if I knew someone that might
  16 be interested in helping out with a technology project he was running
  17 as a teacher at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ecolefrancodanoise.dk/&quot;&gt;L&#39;école
  18 franco-danoise&lt;/a&gt; - the Danish-French school and kindergarden.  The
  19 kids were building robots, rovers.  The story behind it is to build a
  20 rover for use
  21 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ecolefrancodanoise.dk/first-week-on-the-dark-side&quot;&gt;on
  22 the dark side of the moon&lt;/a&gt;, and remote control it.  As travel cost
  23 was a bit high for the final destination, and they wanted to test the
  24 concept first, he was looking for volunteers to host a rover for the
  25 kids to control in a foreign country.  I ended up volunteering as a
  26 host, and last week the rover arrived.  It took a while to arrive
  27 after &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ecolefrancodanoise.dk/model-moms&quot;&gt;it was
  28 built and shipped&lt;/a&gt;, because of customs confusion.  Luckily we were
  29 able fix it quickly with help from my colleges at work.&lt;/p&gt;
  30
  31 &lt;p&gt;This is what it looked like when the rover arrived.  Note the cute
  32 eyes looking up on me from the wrapping&lt;/p&gt;
  33
  34 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-esken-med-det-rare-i.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;32%&quot; style=&quot;clear:left&quot;/&gt;
  35 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-den-ser-meg.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;32%&quot; style=&quot;clear:left&quot;/&gt;
  36 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-en-skrue-loes.jpeg&quot; width=&quot;32%&quot; style=&quot;clear:left&quot;/&gt;
  37
  38 &lt;p style=&quot;text-align:left&quot;&gt;Once the robot arrived, we needed to track
  39 down batteries and figure out how to build custom firmware for it with
  40 the appropriate wifi settings.  I asked a friend if I could get two
  41 18650 batteries from his pile of Tesla batteries (he had then from the
  42 wrack of a crashed Tesla), so now the rover is running on Tesla
  43 batteries.&lt;/p&gt;
  44
  45 &lt;p&gt;Building
  46 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/ecolefrancodanoise/arduino-efd/&quot;&gt;the rover
  47 firmware&lt;/a&gt; proved a bit harder, as the code did not work out of the
  48 box with the Arduino IDE package in Debian Buster.  I suspect this is
  49 due to a unsolved
  50 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/pull/2703&quot;&gt; license problem
  51 with arduino&lt;/a&gt; blocking Debian from upgrading to the latest version.
  52 In the end we gave up debugging why the IDE failed to find the
  53 required libraries, and ended up using the Arduino Makefile from the
  54 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/arduino-mk&quot;&gt;arduino-mk Debian
  55 package&lt;/a&gt; instead.  Unfortunately the camera library is missing from
  56 the Arduino environment in Debian, so we disabled the camera support
  57 for the first firmware build, to get something up and running.  With
  58 this reduced firmware, the robot could be controlled via the
  59 controller server, driving around and measuring distance using its
  60 internal acoustic sensor.&lt;/p&gt;
  61
  62 &lt;p&gt;Next, With some help from my friend in Denmark, which commited the
  63 camera library into the gitlab repository for me to use, we were able
  64 to build a new and more complete version of the firmware, and the
  65 robot is now up and running.  This is what the &quot;commander&quot; web page
  66 look like after taking a measurement and a snapshot:&lt;/p&gt;
  67
  68 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-commander.png&quot; width=&quot;40%&quot; border=&quot;1&quot; align=&quot;center&quot;/&gt;
  69
  70 &lt;p&gt;If you want to learn more about this project, you can check out the
  71 &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackaday.io/project/164082-the-dark-side-challenge&quot;&gt;The
  72 Dark Side Challenge&lt;/a&gt; Hackaday web pages.&lt;/p&gt;
  73
  74 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  75 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  76 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  77 </description>
  78         </item>
  79
  80         </channel>
  81 </rss>