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NE-Five (Re)design, Lessons Learned

One common questions I get asked about NE-Five is “is it open source” and I always give the answer “mostly…”, there’s a reason for that. The code has been available for a long while, along with a basic simulation that you can run in Gazebo, but the CAD model has never been shared. That’s becuase […]

Making the RedBoard Work on the Raspberry Pi 5

I’ve been using Red Robotics excellent RedBoard for years now, and while upgrading NE-Five to use a Raspberry Pi 5 I discovered breaking changes which means the available libraries wont work. Basically, the way that GPIO works on the Raspberry Pi 5 is different as it uses its shiny new RP1 chip to wrangle its […]

ESP32-S2 – Deep Sleep & The EN Pin

I’ve been working on a remote control for my cargobot, more on those little teasers soon, and I’ve been having an annoying problem with something that should’ve been simple. The Problem? Switching it on. The controller is running on a Sparkfun ESP32 Thing Plus which has an ESP32-S2 at it’s core. It has an EN […]

How Not To Build A Robot

I’ve gained a lot of experience over the last few months with regards to Fusion 360, 3d printing, electronics and more besides. I thought I’d share some of those lessons. As Complex As You Make It The most important lesson, as with any project, is to have an idea of what you’re building from the […]

Project Bumblebee

Bumblebee?   Bumblebee is my Roomba, so named as long ago he lost his voice.  About a year ago his logic board started playing up and though he was still able to clean, at the end of each cleaning cycle he wouldn’t go into standby and his battery would drain in no time.  At that […]