Dawn Robotics Forum

Product Questions • Dawn Robotics Closing Down - Support Implications

2015-11-17T20:08:47+01:00

Hi all,

Some people may already know this based on this blog post, and the fact that we're running a closing down sale, but if not, unfortunately we're closing down, and indeed may already be closed, depending upon when you read this.

For people who have bought our products, please don't worry that you're going to be hung out to dry, support wise. I'll keep monitoring these forums periodically to try to answer any questions people may have. If you post here and don't get a reponse within a couple of days, please email helpdesk@dawnrobotics.co.uk, as notifications from the forum don't always seem to come through. Also please send me an email if parts you've bought recently, break or are faulty in some way, as I've held back some components to deal with this.

Many thanks to all of Dawn Robotics' customers over the last couple of years. It's been fun.

Regards

Alan

Statistics: Posted by Alan — Tue Nov 17, 2015 8:08 pm

Product Questions • Re: Building RaspPi Camera Robot - Chassis Bundle with 4WD c

2015-02-23T20:15:15+01:00

Hi Scott,

Welcome to the forums.

It's definitely possible to build the robot using the 4WD chassis, but we haven't created a kit for that option and you'll need to do the soldering to attach wires to the 4WD chassis motors.

The basic approach is to wire the 2 left motors in parallel to the ML connection on the Mini Driver, and the 2 right motors in parallel to the MR connection on the Mini Driver. To make the connections I'd recommend using part of a terminal block that you can buy from places such as B&Q.

To steer, the tank steering method that you've suggested seems to work well. You can see a test 4WD robot we built a while back here. One day it might be nice to do a proper kit, but unfortunately I'm lacking time at the moment.

Regards

Alan

Statistics: Posted by Alan — Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:15 pm

Product Questions • Building RaspPi Camera Robot - Chassis Bundle with 4WD chass

2015-02-21T16:36:53+01:00

Hi

I am looking to build something similar to the advertised Raspberry Pi Camera Robot - Chassis Bundle. However I would like to use the 4WD chassis instead of the 2WD.

Will the Dagu Arduino Mini driver board still be sufficient for this task? I see it has 2 h-bridges....does that mean it can output to 2 or 4 wheels?

Control wise the front and rear left/right pairs don't need to be controlled independently, I was planning on using a turning method similar to tanks (left wheels turn back, right wheels go forward for a left turn for example).

Thanks

Scott

Statistics: Posted by scottyblizz — Sat Feb 21, 2015 4:36 pm

Product Questions • Re: Raspberry Pi Camera Robot Kit Question

2014-09-29T14:51:57+01:00

Hi there,

Welcome to the forums. I'll answer this question, and then send a reply to your other question.

The example programs that are provided with the py_websockets_bot library will run both on an external PC, and on a Pi. When running the image processing and motion vector samples on the Pi, you will need to run them from the desktop to begin with, as they make use of some of the OpenCV windowing functionality to display their output (cv2.imshow etc). If remove calls to imshow etc from your programs then they will also run without an X server.

Now, having said that. You can run all of your image and sensor processing code on the Pi, but the Pi doesn't have a very powerful CPU, so it can be slow, especially when performing image processing. To help make things a bit quicker, the py_websockets_bot library provides the option to stream 'small' (160x120) images that have been scaled down on the GPU.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Alan

Statistics: Posted by Alan — Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:51 pm