Small sized brain which runs on DC for a 2WD robotic platform?

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Hi,

I'm looking for a small sized motherboard/Computer which I can use for a (4WD *edit ) 2WD robotic project.Requirement are as below

1. Must run on DC without major modificatons or power converters

2. Dual core if possible with RAM slots.

3. low power consumption(so that I can save weight on the battery)

4. Run Linux distribution and communicate with Arduino.

5 .Small and light weight so I can keep Robot to a smaller size

6. Few USB slots, WIFI if possible , nothing fancy

 

I'm hoping to do image processing and run several nural networks, Not sure if Raspberry PI can handle that much processing .

Is miniITX boards a good fit for this?  originally I was planning to do this with an old mac mini but I'm on a tight budget so any recomendations are welcome.

 

 

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Options

While your requirements were a bit vague, there are a few options I could reccomend you look at.  A Mini-ITX board is probably your best option, if you’re concerned with processing power and/or memory limits look for something with a cpu socket rather than having the processor integrated.  Most boards will only have one or two at most slots for RAM, so figure out how much you need and buy accordingly. You can also find some boards with a DC-DC converter on board, which would minimize the work it would take power it from a battery.

There are also more integrated options like the Intel NUC boards. Though they are a bit more expensive, and require laptop style memory. They also tend to be more purpose built for things such as digital signage. But they are smaller even than a Mini-ITX board, and very low power.

Communication between an arduino is likely going to be limited to serial or ethernet (if you add such a shield to your arduino) in either case. I have seen few Mini-ITX boards with Wi-Fi built-in, some can even act as a hot spot. But do the math as it may be cheaper to find the board you want and add an USB adapter. Bluetooth might be an option as well, but I don’t have much experience there.

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"Roughly the size of a Mac Mini"

 

Runs on DC (internally)

Dual core (2.5 GHz)

RAM slots.

Low power consumption (11W at idle, up to 85W flat out)

Runs Linux

Ready to communicate with Arduino (via Ethernet or Wifi or Bluetooth)

Small and light weight (roughly the size of a Mac Mini)

[has a] few USB slots

has WIFI

Grunty enough to do image processing and two rub at least two neurons together in rural neural networks.

 

Umm, have you thought about a Mac Mini? :slight_smile:

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I admit it was not properly

I admit it was not properly constructed,Mostly due to my lack of knowledge. 

But dont you think Bdk6 was being bit picky on some things?

for example

when I ask for a low power consumption ,I get this

Low power consumption:  Again, a subjective term.  How much power?  1 watt?  10 watts?  200 watts?  What is low power to you?  “to save weight on the battery” What kind of battery?  

Isn’t it clear I’m looking for a brain/computer for my robot? so I’m looking for ideas about a machine which consumes less energy,If the brain needs more energy I have to have a bigger battery , then I have to worry about the extra weight on the robot.

If I knew how much power it need to be … then I won’t be asking these questions here,  to be honest even I don’t know an exact value, I was asking for ideas for low power consuming machine.I don’t even know how much energy is considered low or high when we talk about computers.

Imagine this real world example …Imagine you have no idea about car engines and their fuel consumptions, but you need to buy an economical car to drive , so you go to an expert and ask for a suggestions about low fuel consuming cars, How would you feel if that expert ask you the same questions Bdk6 asked ? all you ask is for general pupose economical cars… you are not intelligent enough to give an exact amount  of fuel consumtion, if you knew that value then you can find the car you need by googling.

I said few ‘USB slots’ ,ok I should have used ‘ports’ instead of  ‘slots’ , but don’t you think it’s childish to pick on a mistake like that? I mentioned as few usb slots, that menas 2-3 , i’m not expecting it to have 10-30 . I thought these thinks are just common sense.

I only asked questions about the computer since I have already buid the robot , so I just didnt bore everyone with that info, even if I have a question about robot/arduino I will asking them questions in a seperate thread. That’s why I named this thread specifically asking for a ‘brain’ for my robot.

I admit some of the questions are not intelligent, but I didnt do it purposly, sorry for not being intelligent enough to be NASA precise when asking a question. If I knew exactly what I needed  with exact figures and everyting then I can get most of the answers form google. I came here and asked the question here since I’m a newbie. All I got was a rude and sarcastic post. 

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I really had to respond to

I really had to respond to this.  I am sorry you were offended, but  bdk6 has answered many of my noob questions with incredible detail and given great advice to me that has saved me a lot of aggravation and time.  I feel a great debt to him (and a number of others) because he has been so willing to answer any questions I have had.  He and many, many folks here want to help and see you be successful.  I only hope that someday I can learn enough to do something useful and return the favor to others.

As with many engineers, the point is valid, but maybe not worded as well as it could be.  It is the nature of the medium posting on a website when 5 minutes of actually talking to someone would clear up everything.  You took his post as sarcastic and rude, but what he is telling you is how to ask the question so you get a useful response. Knowing bdk6 as I do, I know he didn’t mean it to be sarcastic or rude although you might have caught him on a bad day.

My advice is to tell us the nitty gritty “boring” stuff of what you have done, what kind of experience that you have (I am very new to this), what you are trying to do and what you have for parts already.  Then ask the question, what do you recommend?  You could get pushed in a direction that will save you mone, towards libraries you didn’t know about and allow you to do cool things that you hadn’t even thought of before. 

Regards,

Bill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Seriously, mini998, you

Seriously, mini998, you really have your knickers in a knot, don’t you. bdk6 was really trying to help, not calling you stupid. Learning what questions to ask or how to ask them is a pretty significant part of all knowledge. Here is an example from your posts:

“Imagine this real world example …Imagine you have no idea about car engines and their fuel consumptions, but you need to buy an economical car to drive , so you go to an expert and ask for a suggestions about low fuel consuming cars…”

No, going back to your original text then by analogy you asked for “a high performance low consumption car with extra features”. Under those circumstances, what could any expert do but try to nail down what you mean by these terms, how are you trading them off against one another? If there were a magic answer then everyone would be using it.

Incidentally, you have given little response to any other suggestions offered, I notice. Are those efforts so meaningless to you that the most important thing remains to call an experienced, knowledgeable and helpful member here, “childish”?

I suggest you do some research to increase your knowledge so you can sharpen your questions, or else start to explain what does not work for you about suggestions already made so that we can understand your practical problems better.

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Thanks

Thanks , let me try to explain it better.

This is what I have 

Robot - Used a Bigtrak Jr body with Arduino UNO, I can run basic code with servos and sensors on this without any issues.  I use a L298N board for motor control, and a 7.8V 3800 mah RC car battery to power both motors.

This is what I need to achive

I need my robot to do things like…

1. Facial recognition and do certain tasks, display a msg etc… 

2. Calculate the distance to an object from the robot it self, I’d imagine this will lot of resource hungry process.

3. Robot will be learning by storing these information it sees throught he camera  and will be using these knowledge when needed to make a decision, I’m hoping to use kernal methods instead of nueral networks if possible here , I have experience with kernal methods in simulated robots, so theory part is not an issue here. Then again I imagine this to be bit resource hungry as well.

So to do all above I need a decent computer inside the robot, I’m hoping to use arduino to control low level functions (servo control, getting sensor input) and then use a much powerful computer to do the intelligent bits. I also read that I can use I2C to communicate between Arduino and RPI very efficiently, so I’m hoping to do that. 

So far I have programmed these AI in normal computers so I didnt have to worry too much about size/weight/power consumption until now. At the moment I have a basic functioning wheeled robot , I read that raspbery pi can do facial recogniton wth openCV to the level I need , but I doubt it will be enough to do all the tasks I have in mind.

Not sure if BBB will be enough but it’s specs seem to be better than RPI, I might as well try one of them.

So thats the detailed explanation , all I was after is for a smaller / lighter computer (not bigger than mac mini) with decent performance,Since it’s on the move it needs to be less power consuming.

Worse case scenario I can use a mac mini, but then I will have to change my robot for a bigger one and cost is also a factor  so I’d leave that option as the last hope.

 

 

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I’m not after a magic answer

I’m not after a magic answer here, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know exactly what I want here, was hoping general suggestions, not the magic answer.

Two other guys suggested mini-ITX and mac mini, which I already have in mind and done a bit of research,not sure what you mean by not noticing them.

 

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Thanks everyone who helped

Thanks everyone who helped with their suggestions.

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Now that you have told us the size of your base,

have you considered trying to offload some of the heavy lifting to a desktop/laptop via wifi? That would save power for you in a pretty significant way, if you can manage to get the throughput you need via wireless. Even if you use one of the ARM based SBCs you would have easy access to wireless transmission, and, you might save precious battery power.

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@6677Thnaks , Mini ITX was a

@6677

Thnaks , Mini ITX was a very good suggestion , I  started looking for them after your post .

Regarding calculating the distances, I was talking about doing it through the camera, ie: identifying an object and then calculating thedistance, Not sure what approach I should take yet, but I’d assume it to take quite a bit of processing power.

Yes you are right  , it seems  bigtak jr isn’t going to be big enough, I’m thinking of the possibility of building a bigger base with better motor drivers after your post.

 

@birdmun 

Thanks for WIFI suggestion, that is defenitely something I can try, at least I can use that method for some of the tasks and keep less power hungry tasks on the robot it self.