<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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+ <item>
+ <title>The space rover coquine, or how I ended up on the dark side of the moon</title>
+ <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>
+ <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>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 2 Jun 2019 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A while back a college and friend from Debian and the Skolelinux /
+Debian Edu project approached me, asking if I knew someone that might
+be interested in helping out with a technology project he was running
+as a teacher at <a href="https://www.ecolefrancodanoise.dk/">L'école
+franco-danoise</a> - the Danish-French school and kindergarden. The
+kids were building robots, rovers. The story behind it is to build a
+rover for use
+<a href="http://blog.ecolefrancodanoise.dk/first-week-on-the-dark-side">on
+the dark side of the moon</a>, and remote control it. As travel cost
+was a bit high for the final destination, and they wanted to test the
+concept first, he was looking for volunteers to host a rover for the
+kids to control in a foreign country. I ended up volunteering as a
+host, and last week the rover arrived. It took a while to arrive
+after <a href="http://blog.ecolefrancodanoise.dk/model-moms">it was
+built and shipped</a>, because of customs confusion. Luckily we were
+able fix it quickly with help from my colleges at work.</p>
+
+<p>This is what it looked like when the rover arrived. Note the cute
+eyes looking up on me from the wrapping</p>
+
+<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-esken-med-det-rare-i.jpeg" width="32%" style="clear:left"/>
+<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-den-ser-meg.jpeg" width="32%" style="clear:left"/>
+<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-en-skrue-loes.jpeg" width="32%" style="clear:left"/>
+
+<p style="text-align:left">Once the robot arrived, we needed to track
+down batteries and figure out how to build custom firmware for it with
+the appropriate wifi settings. I asked a friend if I could get two
+18650 batteries from his pile of Tesla batteries (he had then from the
+wrack of a crashed Tesla), so now the rover is running on Tesla
+batteries.</p>
+
+<p>Building
+<a href="https://gitlab.com/ecolefrancodanoise/arduino-efd/">the rover
+firmware</a> proved a bit harder, as the code did not work out of the
+box with the Arduino IDE package in Debian Buster. I suspect this is
+due to a unsolved
+<a href="https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/pull/2703"> license problem
+with arduino</a> blocking Debian from upgrading to the latest version.
+In the end we gave up debugging why the IDE failed to find the
+required libraries, and ended up using the Arduino Makefile from the
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/arduino-mk">arduino-mk Debian
+package</a> instead. Unfortunately the camera library is missing from
+the Arduino environment in Debian, so we disabled the camera support
+for the first firmware build, to get something up and running. With
+this reduced firmware, the robot could be controlled via the
+controller server, driving around and measuring distance using its
+internal acoustic sensor.</p>
+
+<p>Next, With some help from my friend in Denmark, which commited the
+camera library into the gitlab repository for me to use, we were able
+to build a new and more complete version of the firmware, and the
+robot is now up and running. This is what the "commander" web page
+look like after taking a measurement and a snapshot:</p>
+
+<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2019-06-02-robot-dark-side-of-moon-commander.png" width="40%" border="1" align="center"/>
+
+<p>If you want to learn more about this project, you can check out the
+<a href="https://hackaday.io/project/164082-the-dark-side-challenge">The
+Dark Side Challenge</a> Hackaday web pages.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Nikita version 0.4 released - free software archive API server</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nikita_version_0_4_released___free_software_archive_API_server.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
-everything you need to program the <a href="https://microbit.org/">BBC
-micro:bit</a> is available from the Debian archive. All this is
-thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
-packaging team. The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
-program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
-machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
-into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.</p>
-
-<p>There are three main pieces involved. The first to enter Debian
-was
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash</a>,
-which was accepted into the archive 2019-01-12. The next one was
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor</a>, which
-showed up 2019-01-13. The final and hardest part to to into the
-archive was
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython</a>,
-which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
-before it was accepted 2019-01-20. The last one is already in Debian
-Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days. This
-all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
-'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
-Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
-catered for.</p>
-
-<p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
-package</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
-package. This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
-get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
-the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.</p>
-
-<p>This should make it easier to have fun.</p>
-
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
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