Dawn Robotics Forum

Hi Alan, I downloaded the new PiBot image and wrote it to the SD card but there was no camera streaming everything else seemed to work just fine.
So I followed the instructions in the Camera problems thread in the forum and this was the result.
A) It did not boot into X
B) And screen shot below.



I thought the image was maybe corrupted by me so I deleted it and downloaded a new one and used a different SD card
Same result: (See picture below)



I then downloaded the old version and installed that, worked fine booted into X etc. I can’t test the network because the old version does not have my Network Adaptor drives, BTW thanks for adding them to the new version works perfectly.
So if you could check or maybe I’m doing something wrong?

Hi there,

Sorry this is my bad. I meant to update the instructions for flashing an SD card image but forgot.

The SD card image was reduced in size to make sure that it fitted onto all 4GB SD cards. Unfortunately this means that there's not much space on it. You need to run

Code: Select all

sudo raspi-config

and expand the partition. After a reboot all should hopefully be ok.

Regards

Alan

Hi Alan thanks for the quick reply, I did that , X started ok and I did the re-build on the camera .. still no stream, ill build a basic streamer to test the camera tomorrow to see if thats broken. I used a external powered USB hub to add on the keyboard - mouse and wireless so I dont think its a power drain issue , and I've been monitoring the battery via the new config web page ( which is great thanks) and 7.2 volts holding steady feom my 2000 nihm battery.
the camera light goes on when you access the webpage and goes off when u close it.
I tried it on the pi via localhost, no stream from that either.
Ill keep you updated

Hi there,

Glad X server starts now. Odd that you're not getting camera images back, especially as the light is coming on, which suggests that images are streaming. Which browser are you using?

Also, you may have some joy trying the examples for the Python library py_websockets_bot which we've just written a blog post about.

Regards

Alan

Hi Alan, turns out to be a Dead Camera socket on the PI, bought a new one and was up and running in sec's. Cpc took the old one as a return but I now have two identical builds to use for dev'ing
The Pan & tilt is still shaking so I'll order one of yours just to make sure its not the Dagu ( plus a fitting kit), if yours shakes I'll send you back the board for replacement if thats ok ? *Edit your out of stack Damn !
I also bought a Noir Camera going to test both that and the standard , I'll fraps it and u-toob the vid just for peoples reference.
a) Next step is to use your build but redo the interface buttons so that you can use the mouse on the pan and tilt plus arrow keys for movement.
b) Then intergrate the power level into the web interface
c) And then an interface choice to switch on boot, between the Pi being the DHCP or login to the home WiFi.
e)Then build a robot called Hammerstein, to take over the world !! mahhaww

Hi Fivetide,

I like the sound of your robot plans. Very interested to see how you get on with item c), although slightly nervous about the take over the world part.

Sorry we're out of stock on Pan/Tilt kits. New shippment from Dagu should hopefully land on Friday.

With regards to shaking from the mini driver. Unless this is quite extreme, I don't think that this will be fixed by changing the mini driver, I think that it's just standard for the kit at the moment. With the kits I've assembled, I've noticed that it can be a bit noisy at certain positions, but I haven't found that it shakes the camera image excessively. I would say that shaking with the pan/tilt kit we use maybe isn't as bad as the video you posted, but it is similar.

Going forward, I do want to improve this situation, but I believe that the solution is a software fix rather than a hardware fix. If you have access to an ossiloscope you should see that the PWM signal produced by the mini driver jitters a bit. This I believe is possibly due to a bug, either in the mini driver firmware, or in the Arduino servo library. I think that we found earlier that moving the servo to different pins produced less jitter? Therefore one fix you could try is to change the pins used for the servos in mini_driver_firmware.ino (PAN_SERVO_PIN and TILT_SERVO_PIN). If you also change the value of VERSION_MINOR or VERSION_MAJOR then your changes will be automatically uploaded to the mini driver when the robot web server next starts up.

Regards

Alan