Macfeegle Prime is heading back to PiWars! A lot has happened in that time, ignoring the whole *gestures broadly at the world*, a lot has moved on in software terms. We now have Ubuntu 20.04 for the Pi, ROS Noetic has been released for it, and Approximate Engineering has rewritten the RedBoard+ library from scratch.… Read More »
I have taken the plunge and I’ve gone part time at work, dropping to three days a week, to give me far more time to concentrate on my lifelong passion of robotics with the aim of making it my career! This wasn’t exactly planned if I’m honest but the result of a recent epiphany, building… Read More »
…because why do anything the easy way? I’ve switched to using the StereoPi image for MacFeegle Prime as it offers the lowest latency for streaming video, the downside is I can’t get ROS to build on it so I’m using Docker which needs to interface with hardware… I’m using the RedBoard+ by Red Robotics, it… Read More »
As per my last post I’m using Docker on my robot with ROS. The last task is to get docker running from a dedicated USB drive to split resources between that and the SD card the OS is running from. A good guide to mounting a USB drive can be found here. Note, rather than… Read More »
I’ve been using the Ubiquity Robotics Raspberry Pi ROS image to run both the robot and controller, it seemed the easiest way to get ROS running, but now I’m trying to get low latency streaming working from the cameras it is proving tricky. New Plan, use the Stereo Pi image with Docker to host ROS… Read More »
In an earlier post I talked about The Plan, that post has become a living document as I’m updating it as bits get done. I’m trying to think a bit more about the order in which I’m doing things as some tasks have prerequisites and thought I’d share my thoughts on how to manage it.… Read More »
I’ve decided to use ROS (Robot Operating System) for my PiWars project as it’s industry standard and this is an excellent excuse to learn it. For some reason I thought that ROS was a realtime operating system, turns out it is a bunch of libraries and services that run on top of existing operating systems,… Read More »
With a heavy heart, PiWars has been postponed and a Virtual PiWars has been announced for April 25th prior to a full competition being run. This is very much the right thing to do and I totally support it. One thing this does mean is more time to overcomplicate expand functionality! Here are a few… Read More »
MacFeegle Prime, Minimal Viable Product, To Be Decided… Time’s pressing and though I started with lofty goals I need to set a minimum that I’ll be happy with that are acheivable, in software engineering (and probably other fields) we refer to this as the minimum viable product. The Challenges There are seven challenges in PiWars,… Read More »
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… Read More »