Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

Overview of this book

BeagleBone Blue is effectively a small, light, cheap computer in a similar vein to Raspberry Pi and Arduino. It has all of the extensibility of today’s desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise. This project guide provides step-by-step instructions that enable anyone to use this new, low-cost platform in some fascinating robotics projects. By the time you are finished, your projects will be able to see, speak, listen, detect their surroundings, and move in a variety of amazing ways. The book begins with unpacking and powering up the components. This includes guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully, and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Blue. You will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including making the system see using a webcam, hear using a microphone, and speak using a speaker. You will then learn to use the new hardware capability of the BeagleBone Blue to make your robots move, as well as discover how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects. Later, you will learn to remotely control your robot through iOS and Android devices. At the end of this book, you will see how to integrate all of these functionalities to work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: Drone and Submarine.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Connecting a sonar sensor to an Arduino

Here is a picture of a sonar sensor, the HC-SR04, an extremely inexpensive sensor that works well in these sorts of situations:

These sonar sensors are available at most online electronics stores, including amazon.com. There are ways to connect this sensor directly to the BeagleBone Blue; however, there are two disadvantages to this approach. First, you'd need to learn the Programmable Real-Time Unit (PRU) process for BeagleBone Blue development. These sensors need specifically timed pulses, and the PRU system would allow you to create them. Also, since you're going to use multiple sensors to look around your mobile platform, you would need a significant number of General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) connectors.

For these reasons, you're going to a use a simple and inexpensive processor, an Arduino, to connect to the sensors...