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very early version

A project log for small easy to use Roboter

Two wheels, one ESP module, one Microcontroller and some sensors.

alexAlex 03/16/2016 at 14:014 Comments

I did built up this little robot (see image below). Mainly for testing whether the motors and the ESP8266 did not disturb each other. I did also started to do some of the HTML coding for simple webpage to control the robot. Driving forward does also work already. But I am not familiar with HTML and java script . I hope this will change during further progress on this project.

As you can see its one of my #ESP8266 (ESP-07/12) Dev Board (rev2.0) With a LIPo. The #DRV8836 Breakout wired up at the top.

Discussions

deʃhipu wrote 03/16/2016 at 15:22 point

The plan sounds pretty... sound. I wonder, do you plan to have some sort of a three-state switch for the UART, so that you can change between esp8266, arduino and none (with esp8266 connected to arduino then)?

In Tote-HAD I worked around that problem by using I²C for communication, which leaves both UARTs free for programming and debugging.

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Alex wrote 03/16/2016 at 16:29 point

Thanks.

I was planing to use pin headers and Jumpers for rewiring the UART lines. It should be so possible to program both via the robot's USB connector. In a later version I am thinking on programming the ESP over the air. And the Arduino over the ESP acting as wifi to UART bridge. Therefore I will also connect the Arduino's reset pin to one IO of the ESP to enter boot mode. 

For debug informations I will use the 2nd UART of the ESP and/or a web server on the ESP.  Also the Arduino could sent debug information via UART to the ESP and the ESP would process it.

The plan is to use i2c only for sensors.

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deʃhipu wrote 03/16/2016 at 17:05 point

I see, that sounds good. I think the second UART on the ESP is quite limited, and I vaguely remember there were some problems using them both at once, but that might be resolved already. You plan to program it in C++? There is this new shiny micropython firmware coming...

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Alex wrote 03/16/2016 at 17:22 point

To be honest I did never used the 2nd UART yet (should do that). All I know is that it only have TX, no RX. But that's ok for debug information. 

I am planing to program it with C++ and the Arduino IDE. There are some very good and powerful libraries available.

This python could be also nice. but I did never done something with Python and I am familiar to C/C++. With HTMl and java script for the webpage hosted on the ESP I think there is already enough new languages for me in this project.

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