rpi-drd

Raspberry Pi powered robot. Eventually semi-autonomous.

What is it?

• The code that runs a Pi powered DAGU Multi-Chassis with two motors, encoders, and a camera
• Basically just a $250, multiple man-month long project to antagonize my cats
• Daemon or ncurses output
• Setup pins via config file (TODO)
• Fastcgi web interface for control and status (TODO)
• Camera output to the web interface (TODO)

Modules

1. Server - The intermediary interface between the Web module and Controller. This is the main entry point.
2. Controller - The motor controller interface. Steering, driving, camera controller.
3. Web - The static website with AJAX controls.

Objectives

• Basic I/O, SIG handling
• Motor PWM output test
• Motor Encoder input test
• Motor PWM/encoder PID loops

1. Encapsulate the above
2. Daemon mode
3. FastCGI interface

Hardware

Required:

• Raspberry Pi B+ (need the 2nd PWM output pin)
• DAGU Multi-Chassis
• 2 Motor Encoders
• Dual channel PWM motor controller
• Lots of batteries

Optional:

• Pi Camera
• Distance Sensors

Software

Build Dependancies

• bcm2835
• ncurses
• rt

Deploy Dependancies

• rsync/scp

Run Dependancies

• lighttpd / apache
• fastcgi
• spawn-fcgi

Building

For ease of development, it is cross-compiled.

bcm2835: ./configure --build=arm-linux --host=arm-rpi-linux-gnueabi --prefix=/home/nick/dev/rpi

Since I don't know enough about make to have it autodetect/find the right toolchain, run this before running make: export PATH=$PATH:/home/nick/x-tools/arm-rpi-linux-gnueabi/bin

Installation/Deployment

1. Install packages on the Pi:

• pacman -S lighttpd fcgi spawn-fcgi rsync ncurses

1. configure lighttpd and fcgi on the Pi
2. make upload

Running the server process

spawn-fcgi -s /var/run/lighttpd/drd-server.socket -u alarm -U http -- /home/alarm/server