My TurtleBot4/Create3/Raspberry Pi 5 ROS 2 WaLI - Wallfollower Looking for Intelligence - Is "Alive" Again

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Even iRobot pulling the Create3 from sales, could not disway my belief that the Create3 is currently the most well apportioned, best supported robot platform available to the hobby builder. I’ve been messin’ with the platform off and on in various incarnations since 2021.

Finally late in 2024, iRobot and ClearPath Robotics solved the Create3 processor overloading issue, so I bought another Create3 (off eBay) and resurrected “WaLI - Wallfollower Looking for Intelligence”. ClearPath says they will support the Create3 at least until 2026, so hopefully WaLI will find the smarts he is looking for quickly.

This Incarnation: TB5-WaLI Jan 2025 - Create3 plus Raspberry Pi 5, RPLidar C1, Oak-D-Lite running Jazzy TB4 service

Second Incarnation: Create3-WaLI Dec 2023 - Mar 2024 (Returned - Create3 Processor overloaded running RTABmap)

First Incarnation: TurtleBot4 Nov 2022 (Returned Immediately - Damaged in Shipment)

Beta Incarnation: Create3 Simulation Beta Oct 2021 - (Built Raspberry Pi 4 ROS 2 Galactic to test Create3 Simulation Beta)

TB5-WaLI Build Blog is here

2025-01-22_TB5-WaLI
2025-01-22_TB5-WaLI2918×4192 1.37 MB 



*** TB5-WaLI TOTAL LIFE STATISTICS ***
Total Awake:   277.65  hrs
Total Naps:     0  hrs
Total Life:    277.65  hrs (since Jan 09, 2025)
Playtimes (Undocked-Docked): 30
Average playtime (last five) 2.1 hrs 
Average docked time (last two) 6.3 hrs 
Sessions (boot):  17
Average Session:  16.3 hrs
Safety Shutdowns:  0
Total Travel:  344.7 meters 1130.9 feet

Last Dock and UnDock:
2025-01-24 21:26|wali_node.py| ** WaLI dock goal result - Docking: success at battery 17% after 2.0 hrs playtime **
2025-01-25 08:07|wali_node.py| ** WaLI Undocking: success at battery 100%, docked for 9.8 hrs **
2025-01-25 10:21|wali_node.py| ** WaLI dock goal result - Docking: success at battery 17% after 2.2 hrs playtime **
2025-01-25 13:10|wali_node.py| ** WaLI Undocking: success at battery 100%, docked for 2.8 hrs **
2025-01-25 15:24|wali_node.py| ** WaLI dock goal result - Docking: success at battery 17% after 2.2 hrs playtime **

Checking Battery State
Battery: 0.80

Checking Docking State
Docked: True
---
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TurtleBot4 is Finally A Reality (11 Users Spotted In One Month)

ROS is a simple concept that enables the most complex robotics functions to be shared, but coming up to speed in ROS is greatly enabled when there is a community of users on the same platform. What the Turtlebot3 did for ROS and for learning ROS was phenomenal.

My expectations three years ago, when the TurtleBot4 was finally released for sale, was that a community of new users would jump on the new platform. Self docking, superb odometry enhanced with an optical mouse, native wall-following, native obstacle avoidance, ample power for the Raspberry Pi and auxiliary power for additional sensors, tutorials, examples, an impressive simulation environment, a stereo depth camera with onboard neural-net processor, AND developer support from both ClearPathRobotics, iRobotEducation, and OpenRobotics - The TurtleBot4 would have it all, and a community to share the adventure with and to help with the learning process.

I was surprised when I could not find more than three users on-line across the entire world, and it seemed they were mainly “hardware beta program” participants. The expected rush of new TurtleBot4 users did not appear to materialize which made me question if ROS 2 was going to catch on.

Over the last month, 11 new Turtlebot4 users have joined the “active user community” on GitHub. I am so excited because each brings knowledge and solve issues we all can benefit from.

Example, several of us are using ROS 2 Jazzy on our TurtleBot4 robots. Software changes were made in the Jazzy release, that caused new Jazzy users following the tutorials to have issues with navigation not generating global and local costmaps. A user in Mangalore India hit the problem and published a fix! This broke the navigation log jam for me and a couple other users as well. Exactly why I wanted to be a part of the TurtleBot4 community.

Global_and_Local_Costmaps
Global_and_Local_Costmaps2668×1952 464 KB 

*** TB5-WaLI TOTAL LIFE STATISTICS ***
Total Awake: 799.9 hrs
Total Naps: 0 hrs
Total Life: 799.9 hrs (since Jan 09, 2025)
Playtimes (Undocked-Docked): 101
Average playtime (last five) 1.9 hrs 
Average docked time (last two) 7.9 hrs 
Sessions (boot): 28
Average Session: 28.5 hrs
Safety Shutdowns: 1
Total Travel: 669.3 meters 2195.8 feet

Last Dock and UnDock:

2025-02-16 19:11|wali_node.py| ** WaLI Undocking: success at battery 100%, docked for 4.8 hrs **
2025-02-16 20:57|wali_node.py| ** WaLI dock goal result - Docking: success at battery 20% after 1.8 hrs playtime **
2025-02-17 08:01|wali_node.py| ** WaLI Undocking: success at battery 100%, docked for 11.1 hrs **
2025-02-17 09:58|wali_node.py| ** WaLI dock goal result - Docking: success at battery 20% after 2.0 hrs playtime **

Checking Battery State
Battery: 0.28

Checking Docking State
Docked: True
---
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