Will Jessop's Writings

Sailing, Food, Programming, Technology, and other things
Do you have a Ruby on Rails application you'd like to be faster, more scalable, or just upgraded safely? I'm currently open to new contracts doing Ruby on Rails and Postgres scaling and performance work, and Rails upgrades. Contact me at will@willj.net to get started.
| tags:tech robotics electronics 3D Printing

First robot remote driving test

I programmed some remote control software using a Golang receiving program on the robot and a ruby control client using my gamepad ruby gem and an Xbox 1 controller. It worked OK. It was a bit jerky, there’s no PWM so no acceleration, it’s either go or stop; anything not totally rigid on the robot wobbles. Also the position of the camera doesn’t show enough of the robot so it’s hard to get a real idea of where the robot is.

I was filming, the robot was being controlled my my wife, Morwenna, from upstairs.

The robot is also prone to shed a track if the “half turn” is used too much, that is one track forwards or backwards, the other one stationary. I can fix this in software if I can work out a way to do PWM on the robot that doesn’t run the Raspberry Pi CPU.