I have officially made the rover work a bit. Today I have made it so that I can actually see the TOF sensor work like a psudo-liDAR. In rviz i have plotted some dots which is the edge of my room.
This is just from the perspective of the rover which means where ever the rover is pointing it will only scan that particular area. Next I’m going to make the rover move and then it will plot the are from third person view and it will actually start mapping the room
I had a error where one of the motors were not working and i thought it was the driver. I even ordered two more drivers and after burning my finger again then i found out that its the batteries. They were discharged.
So two things have happened. One is a good thing and another is a bad thing.
The good news is that i have successfully inegrated ros 2 to the rover and controlled it using my laptop keyboard
The bad new is that my motor driver nowhas one burnt mosfet causing my right wheel to not turn front. So now i have to buy a new aone and exchange it.
In the mean time i can configure and tune the TOF sensor to scan its surroundings.
I have attached the TOF sensor to the servo mount. I first removed the servos then made holes to fit the TOF sensor but then when I added the servos I got to know that the servos were in the way. So i had to move the TOF sensor and at last i figured it out and screwed it in place.
I have fixed the servo pan and tilt mount on the rover.
I have also tested the servos and they work perfectly. Ihave driven the rover with the servos running in full speed and the rover is still very stable to visible wobble was there. But when the servo run very slow there is some shake in the mount. I think I should do smtg to prevent that as the scans would heavily get disturbed with vibrations.
I just made the schematics of the main Pcb that i already made. Also it is my first time making a circuit or even trying to so please excuse me if the connections are a bit confusing.
For better understanding I will add all the connections in the readme file so please check that too. :)
I have added another mdf board on top of the pcb using brass standoffs. This majorly gives me two advantages.
It keeps all the wires and the circuits hidden under the upper plate which makes the rover look neat.
It gives me space on the top and also some height for the servo and the TOF sensor to keep so that there is nothing that interferes with the TOF sensor while its reading the distances. This makes it have no false reading which gives us a good result.
I also did observe that the rover is tilting a bit to the front which i think is not a big problem as it can be solved using the tilt servo in the servo mount. We can use the built in MPU6050 to get the exact tilt and counter it giving us perfect 90 degree readings.
I have tested the servo motor and the TOF sensor to see if the mount was working perfectly and to check if the TOF is also working good.
There was a bit of shaking or vibration because the servo motor was not very accurate and i have to stop it every 2 degrees for the TOF sensor to measure the distance.
It was solved partially by connection the servo o external power supply which wont be the problem with the rover as its powered using 2 18650 batteries.
By tweaking the speed and degrees of the servo it was further improved and the data was fine not bad but not great either. I think to properly make the data show we need to use ROS.
I made the wire connection from the motors to the board a it better and i taped everything to make sure nothing touches smtg thats not meant to be touched.
I also added a switch in between the battery holder and the buck converter so that i don’t need to take out the batteries every time apart from charging.
I fixed some wiring issues and also i mounted the battery holder and added the buck converter and yeah of course i burned my finger on the soldering iron😭
I have made the official PCB which is handmade using a perfboard.
It contains a Esp32, DRV8833 motor driver, MPU6050 Accelerometer. It also contains the male headers with premade connections.
The male headers are for the TOF sensor and the two servo motors in for the pan and tilt. It also contains a shared gnd and 5v which also consists of two 470uf capacitors to ensure good power supply to all the components.
The pcb is powered through two 18650 batteries with a buck converter to get seamless 5v current, It can be connected via a screw terminal. the other screw terminal is to power the esp32 via the c type port because thats giving me better reliability with the esp32.
This is my first self made pcb and it worked in the first try without any problems.
I bought some new servo motors and the pan-tilt mount works perfectly now :)
I’m working on a os on a web as part of a mission in stardance. I have so far just added some introduction about myself and added a little time and date indicator on the top right. And yeah its Breaking Bad themed so stay tuned i have some good ideas to implement.
Today i planned out the circuit for the perfboard and also went ahead to make it but then i bought some solder wire recently but its the worst solder wire i have used in my life. it doesn’t stick to copper idk why. So i stopped it and i have to order some solder wire now. And also this is my first custom pcb so i dont even know how to use pcb design software so though going old school was better with pen and paper.
I have made the rover roam around using my phone as the controller. For now i have just connected using breadboard and held them using tape but im yet to make a pcb for it using a perfboard which will make this much more better
I started assembling the servo pan and tilt mount but then i cam across the most absurd and ragebaiting issue.i have five servo motors with me which are pretty old but were used in my previous projects. so all 5 of those servos are dead. im truly fustrated right now and should order new ones.
I have soldered female headers on to a perfboard for the esp32 to be kept on.
