Book Image

Raspberry Pi Robotic Blueprints

Book Image

Raspberry Pi Robotic Blueprints

Overview of this book

The Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card-sized single-board computers developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools. The Raspberry Pi is known as a tiny computer built on a single circuit board. It runs a Linux operating system, and has connection ports for various peripherals so that it can be hooked up to sensors, motors, cameras, and more. Raspberry Pi has been hugely popular among hardware hobbyists for various projects, including robotics. This book gives you an insight into implementing several creative projects using the peripherals provided by Raspberry Pi. To start, we’ll walk through the basic robotics concepts that the world of Raspberry Pi offers us, implementing wireless communication to control your robot from a distance. Next, we demonstrate how to build a sensible and a visionary robot, maximizing the use of sensors and step controllers. After that, we focus on building a wheeled robot that can draw and play hockey. To finish with a bang, we’ll build an autonomous hexcopter, that is, a flying robot controlled by Raspberry Pi. By the end of this book, you will be a maestro in applying an array of different technologies to create almost any imaginable robot.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Raspberry Pi Robotic Blueprints
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Connecting the laser source and target


The last step in creating the laser tag robots is to add the laser source and laser target, as well as the code that will let you fire the source and detect a hit on the target. First, you'll need to install the hardware.

Let's start with the laser source. You can just use a raw laser source, similar to the one shown in the following image:

They are inexpensive and available on eBay and other online electronics retailers. However, it is a bit easier if you get a laser source with a bit more supporting circuitry, as shown in the following:

These are also available from a number of online retailers, you can find similar modules. All you need is a way to turn on your laser with a control signal from Raspberry Pi. In this module, you'll connect the device to one of the open collector outputs on the motor controller board, the GND pin to OC1 pin, and the S pin to other OC1 pin connection, as shown in the following image:

Now, just a bit of code to add a function...