So months have gone by... oh ok, more than 18 at this point... since my initial post about my work resurrecting Robie. However, soon after that post I quickly realized the limitations of the Arduino setup in terms of doing anything I would find interesting and so Robie went back on the shelf.
Now I have Pi.... a Raspberry Pi B+ in fact. 700mhz arm computer with 512MB of RAM running raspian linux. Amazon had a kit for sale that included all the essentials to get rolling and quite a bit more for farting around with it for $80.
In the last few nights have have:
- Successfully setup the Pi (pretty much comes ready to roll)
- Setup VNC access from my mac
- Built a couple of perl scripts on the Pi to make noise on an attached speaker
- Loaded Arduino dev on the Pi from my Mac
- attached the Arduino from my earlier tinkering to the Pi and tested out an accelerometer
- rooted and installed Cyanogen mod to my old Nexus 7 tablet... no I do not know exactly what I intend to do... Animated face? Additional Source of data/storage/processing power? Alternative main brain to the Pi?
My to do List:
- Attach Camera Module to Pi
- Take picture and access from Macbook (not via VNC)
- Stream Video to VLC on Mac
- Connect Arduino back up to Robie Motors
- Have Arduino Motor control originate from Pi program (Python?)
- Have Pi stream motor status to Mac (start of telemetry...)
- Have Pi accept motor control inputs from Mac
- Stream accelerometer data back to Mac via Pi
- Connect Ping sensor up to Arduino
- Ship data to Pi
- Ship data to Mac
- Connect Servo up to Arduino
- Control from Pi
- Control from Mac Via Pi
- Build Pan/Tilt solution for ping sensor(s)
- Connect Nexus 7 (or more likely 4... think the 7 is just an expendable test bed) to Pi
- Access nexus 7 accelerometer status? Stream via App?
- Use Nexus 7 camera ?
- Animate face for Robie ?
- Play Robie sounds through Nexus 7
- Connect Robie speaker up to Pi or Arduino
- Play Robie sounds
- Rig Robie Contact points for original sound effects
- Design new Robie sounds... can Pi OCR and Pi Cam combine to let Robie do Text to speech?
- Pi OCR from Pi Camera to generate Text sent to Nexus 7 Google powered Text to speech routine?
- Design and implement all above into Robie chassis or alt base solution?
- Scavenge Roomba Drive system? (probably need beefier motor control solution....)
- Design new arms\Gripers in sketchup with micro servo's and linear actuators in mind...
- Start working on integrated wifi based tele robotics interface for running Robbie via WiFi from Mac
- Develop Autonomous Routines for navigating\mapping the house
- Add sensors for routine mapping of House status
- Temp
- Humidity
- ??
- Build charging base
- Wirelss?
- Solar?
Kind of a rough layout of components I ultimately want to integrate inside Robie:
Yes, I know it is quite possible to run all the stuff hanging off the Arduino directly from the Pi via the GPIO pins. But then I'd have an arduino gathering dust :-) I have a parrallax propeller board sitting around as well and it may get incorporated at some point. On a more serious note, I am rather interested in the complexities of interfacing multiple compnents like this.
Given my general pace of progress on Robie through the years I imagine I should have this done by the time I am 50... which means I am more than half way their already :-) Though in all seriousness I actually may keep fairly steady progress on this for a while as I think I have answers for how to get through most of the above list with bits and bobs I have in hand. The Raspberry Pi really is a marvel in terms of what it makes possible for such a low cost. As such it represents something of a "missing link" for my long term crazy thoughts with regards to animating my old buddy. If I actually do manage most of this the end goal is not a cheesy toy upgrade... I do have a notion to put together a bit more serious rover. Robie Jr. just makes for a fun test bed that lets me make good on some ideas I have had bouncing around in my head for a loooooooong time.
