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

Basic motor control and the tracked vehicle


To build this project, you'll want to start with either a wheeled or a tracked vehicle. There are many options. The following is an image of a tracked platform:

As with the RC car or toy robot, it is difficult to directly connect Raspberry Pi to the DC motors that control the speed and direction of the tracked vehicle. Instead, you'll want to add a DC motor controller for this. You'll use the RaspiRobot Board V2 for this project, the same board that was introduced in Chapter 1, Adding Raspberry Pi to an RC Vehicle.

The board will provide the drive signals for the tracked vehicle. By driving each motor separately, you'll also be able to turn the vehicle. By reversing the signals, you'll be able to change the vehicle's direction and make very sharp turns. The following are the steps to connect the motor control board:

  1. Place the motor control board onto the Raspberry Pi.

  2. Now, connect the battery power connector to the power connector on the board. Use...