The Raspberry Pi Thread [6]

My Pi 400 got used quite often, pretty much daily. My Pi 5 is in its place now. I had a spare keyboard and mouse.

I'm tinkering with something pretty well weekly. More Pico than Pi these days. Mostly coding versus building. My background is in electronics, as you know I'm a retired electronic technician. That makes the "getting out the soldering iron" part a lot easier. It also helps with the "understanding what this thing does" part.

Sitting here at my Windows PC, I have several Pi's and Pico's in the background doing stuff. It's very satisfying knowing "I made that". I guess for some of it a more accurate description is "I made that do that".

On this PC, my daily driver, I have the RGB Keypad that launches my Apps and Programs with a single button push. I can sit down with a coffee in one hand and just push buttons to open my camera feeds, e-mail, web browser etc. Just a couple tap, tap, taps and my important stuff is on the go. Helps to have a 3 monitor setup. I've spoiled myself, I think I deserved it.

Next to that is my desktop lighting control. An encoder wheel with some buttons wired up to a Pico Plasma stick. I just hit a button to light up my desktop and turn the wheel to adjust the brightness. Right now its 1 AM and a dark room with no lights on. Easy peasy to type this post in though. Easy on the eyes too as the LED strip is under a shelf and pointed down. No glare in my eyes.

I'm bragging a bit but its hard not too. I find it very satisfying to have this stuff doing what I want it to do. Versus Windows my way or the highway.

This is what I'm tinkering with at the moment. Early days though. It's up on stands so it doesn't scoot across my desk while testing code. I know the motor encoders work, and the motors run. Also tested the RGB LED's. There are two strings of 6 RGB LED's down each side. I want to have those show the motor speed for each motor. I'll be pulling code from several different examples to get it done. It's made out of what I had on hand. The final version will likely have a bigger metal chassis. I'm going to a add a VL53L5CX 8x8 Time of Flight (ToF) Array Sensor Breakout at some point for obstacle avoidance. I'll be a while just sorting out the motor speed to led string stuff.

I have a couple of 2 wheel drive Pi Zero + ExplorerpHat sitting on a shelf gathering dust.
Explorer pHAT
I had them running and controlled with a wireless keyboard. It was a bit of a PITA setting up the keyboard control. No motion sensors or collision avoidance. I had issues with the keyboard control stopping to work. My grand kids just got frustrated with them and stopped playing with them. I think they (my grandkids) didn't shut them down properly. They just turned the power off and corrupted the OS. I probably should have used build root or something?
If I get this current rover working I may have another go at my Pi based versions. I do agree that Micro Python has its challenges. And the limited memory for running code in can cramp your style. I still prefer a Micro Controller over a SBC for this type of device. Just my personal preference these days.

I got the encoders, Micro Metal Motor Encoder (MMME) (pack of 2) - Sideways
and the mounting brackets, Long Micro Metal Gearmotor Bracket (pack of 2)
They help keep the dust, pet hair, etc, out of the gears. And most important, make mounting the motors a lot easier.

Making some progress. I did up a test file that runs the motors and reads the speed from the encoders. Next step is to display the speed on the RGB LED's. The Inventor has built in LED's that show the motor direction when they are running. I just want to take it up a notch.

EDIT: I thought wrong, don't have the encoders sorted just yet.

How to read encoders on Inventor 2040W - Support - Pimoroni Buccaneers

Going to be a pain getting the LED's to show motor speed the way I want. The orientation isn't the best, it goes
0----11
1----10
2----9
3----8
4----7
5----6

Code:

board.leds.clear()
for L in range(A.speed()):
    board.leds.set_rgb(L, 0, 255, 0)
for R in range(6, B.speed() + 6):
    board.leds.set_rgb(R, 0, 255, 0)

gets me one side reversed high to low direction wise, to the other.
At speed 3 I get . Going to have to do some maths.
(O is on, and I is off)
O---I
O---I
O---I
I---O
I---O
I---O