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

Getting started


You'll need to add some HW, specifically, a wheeled or tracked platform, to make your project mobile. There are a lot of choices. Some are completely assembled, others have some assembly required, and you may even choose to buy the components and construct your own custom mobile platform. Throughout this book, we're going to assume that you don't want to do any soldering or mechanical machining yourself, so let's look at a couple of the more popular variants that are available completely assembled or can be assembled using simple tools (screwdriver and/or pliers).

The easiest mobile platform is one that has two DC motors, each that controls a single wheel, with a small ball in the front or back. Here is a picture of one such platform, sold by SparkFun, at www.sparkfun.com, called the Magician Chassis:

Fair notice: there is some assembly needed with this one, but it is fairly straightforward. There are some less expensive choices for two-wheeled, DC motor platforms, for example...