Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

By : Richard Grimmett
Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

By: Richard Grimmett

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 (18 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Controlling your robot via a web interface


You might also want to control your BeagleBone Blue project from a remote device, perhaps a mobile phone or a tablet. In this section, you'll learn how to create a web server control mechanism for your robot so that you can control it from any web browser via WLAN.

For this part of the project, I'll assume you want to access the device, control two DC motors, and use a connected webcam to give you remote interface access to the video information you'll need to control the direction of the robot. Here is a picture of this sort of robot:

I'll also assume that you have read Chapter 3, Making the Unit Mobile - Controlling Wheeled Movement, so that you know the basics of making the wheels move, and Chapter 5,Allowing Our BeagleBone Blue to See, so that you know how to connect and use the webcam.

Now that you have all of this hooked up, check access to the web camera by using guvcview. Here is what you should see:

Now that you can access the camera, you need...