Hi @xan - Hope things are going well for you. sounds like you are making some progress. So far I have not worried about trying to mount a battery. When I get around to it, need to figure out probably where to mount a switch and the like.
I was using XBee before with the Trossen Arbotix Commander, which does all right. As for our old DIY remotes, yes the Joysticks are better, than many of the general controllers like the PS3 and PS4, but most of the time with my 10 thumbs, if I have more than maybe 4-5 sort of positions in each direction that is probably good enough for my usage.
I do like some of the other things we can do with things like the PS4, like the ability to use itās built in Gyro and the like and you can play around with controlling things of robot by robot by tilting the controller and the like.
Another option that I have not tried in awhile is reasonably cheap RC receiver/transmitter. like one of the cheap a Flysky controllers where we can process the PPM or the like inputs from it.
But it will be great to get these up and running (or at least walking).
That looks interesting. I donāt have that one. Earlier I picked up one of the others I mentioned as I think it was the user @jwatte of Trossen and PJRC mentioned them as an alternative to XBees. Especially for issues with XBees when you are trying to do bidirectional communications and at times ed up with a long time before a message is receivedā¦ Also that it was better for things like Robogames as you donāt have as much issue with conflicts with the airwaves with other robots.
I hope everyone is doing well. We are still hunkered down here playing it safe.
Wondering if anyone has made any progress recently? And as mentioned wondering still what approach others are wanting to go.
I keep meaning to get back to playing. Been distracted with other things like figuring out issues with RA8876 display with images and SPI having problems. Solved this morning.
Trying to decide now if I should get back to trying to control using T4.1 and/or RPI.
Yesterday I also decided to pledge to an Kickstarter project, which campaign ended this morning.
@cbenson - Yes it looked interesting. I did not notice that project until I received the kickstarter email that there was less than 24 hours left. Usually I toss most of these messages, but it looked interesting and I believe it will actually ship! Not sure about the 3d printer one I am still waiting on., which is only about 3 years late.
I forwarded the message to a couple of the people up on PJRC forum that I communicate a lot with, and one of them decided to go ahead and pledgeā¦ So I finally decided to do so alsoā¦
I find it is a lot a fun to work on projects like this, where ideas and code go back and forth. So hopefully will be a fun Winter project.
Right now back to enhancing some VL53L0x TOF library sensor code. I am trying to enhance the Adafruit library for this, to better support multiple sensors and doing non-blocking calls including starting up continuous rangingā¦ Assuming we get them to work correctly may be fun to have one per legā¦ Note: the same person mentioned has these as well, so again fun to bounce it back and forth.
Ah man. Missed that one but I did submit the form for the āI missed the Campaignā so perhaps I can still get in. I have an old Movidius stick and it was impressiveā¦canāt wait to see what this can do with depth. We really need this kind of vision for our robots. I would agree these guys will deliver and probably not too far past their date.
I hope that they are able to add you on to the list. Sorry I did not post it earlier. At some point I will have to decide on which oneā¦ That is I signed up for the āDā one, but during the campaign they added some new variants of them. Including one with Wifi and BT. Also their FAQ talked about maybe some option, with UART, SPI, ā¦ Which will be interesting to find out more about.
But first hopefully get back to getting these guys to stand up and walk
Iām only interested in the D version. I already have the equivalent of the entry level. My humanoid is missing a head, so the D one should look sweet with a little 3D printed T100 headā¦honestly the spacing of the D is a bit sloth-like, so maybe I should do Sid from Ice Age instead. Either way, this looks awesome.
Very interesting camera setup! Thanks for sharing Kurt!
Here in the Netherlands the weather was extremely warm for a few weeks. Therefore I did not get much done. I do have all missing parts in so almost everything is connected and setup. I only need to replace the XBEE socket on the LSS adaptor board since one of the holes seems to be kluged up with solder or something. But for now Iāve connected the XBEE module using one of the sparkfun adapter boards.
One question regarding the calibration of the servos.
I always like to calibrate the legs to be perfectly horizontal or vertical. which makes it easier to measure. I can move the move the leg horizontal en then write the current Origin offset to the servo. Perfect!
I see that it is also possible to configure the angular range of the servo. This is very useful since I use to have that as configuration in my code. The only thing I cannot figure out is if it is possible to configure the range, independent of the origin offset. I want to do this because the origin offset is not the middle of my range.
The only thing I cannot figure out is if it is possible to configure the range, independent of the origin offset.
@xan This exact point was actually discussed quite a bit during the design process (CLN and CLP commands to configure the negative and positive limits) were tested but not released with production firmware. This is the first time it has been raised, so we can see if it can be brought back in a future release. Although there are many questions which come up, the main two seemed to be:
Q1) If the servo receives a position command beyond the limit, would it ignore the command or move to the limit?
Q2) Why would the program send a position beyond the limit (limits to the position could be restricted software-side?)
I thought about it also as I have been playing around with the servos.
Yes you can (and maybe should) do software checks to make sure you are in range. But it is also nice to know that the servos are setup, such that if my software screws up, I wonāt screw up the servos.
Again I am still more familiar with Dynamixel servos and also with these especially when debugging software another thing we might do is to set how much āPunchā the servos have. That is how hard will they try moving before they stop. I think that the LSS may have something similar with MMD command? I am not sure about some of the QMMD description?
Maximum Motor Duty ( MMD )
This command allows the user to limit the duty cycle value sent from the servoās MCU to the DC Motor driver. The duty cycle limit value > can be within the range of 255 to 1023. The default value is 1023. A typical use-case for this command is active compliance.Ex: #5MMD512This will set the duty-cycle to 512 for servo with ID 5 for that session.
Query Maximum Motor Duty ( QMMD )Ex: #5QMMDD might return *5QMMD512This configuration command means the servo, when set to smart mode, will immediately move to 90.0 degrees upon power up. Sending a CFD command without a number (Ex. #5CFD) results in the servo remaining limp upon power up. In order to remove the first position, send no value, ex: #5CFD
{ā¦} how hard will they try moving before they stop.
This also sounds similar to the CL (Current -> Limp) and CH (Current -> Hold) motion modifiers where you set a limit to the current and determine if that limit is passed if the servo goes limp or halts.
I would agree these guys will deliver and probably not too far past their date.
