After a hiatus in order to work on other things, including sitting in the sun as in the UK if the sun shines then you have to go out in it as it might not be shining the next day, or the next week! I have done some more work on my unofficial entry into the Picasso Design Challenge. I have managed to fix all the PCBs and strip boards to the underneath of the display, using Bluetac as there isn't much time left to do anything better. They seem to be secure but I'll have to see if they will stay there. I've tidied up the wires a little bit but it is still a mess as I have to leave enough flexibility for when the motors are rotating as this causes the wires connecting those step motors to move about. I have amended the test programme in the Arduino so that it now moves in a straight line, turns for a bit, moves backwards and then turns again before repeating the sequence, see video
Unfortunately, as can be seen in the video, at least one of the wheel units does not seem to turn properly and gets stuck. I'm not sure why this is as it works perfectly when not placed onto the surface. It may be that one of the turning step motors is just a little less powerful than the others, or maybe something to do with the tyre or maybe some wires are getting in the way, although I cannot see anything. It may just be that the steps motors are just not powerful enough when using the batteries. I have been thinking of changing to a proper power supply as I do not think I will be able to make the HoloPiBot completely independent in the time remaining anyway. Still it just about works sufficiently well to demonstrate the concept.
As time is now very short I have decided not to control the step motors from the Raspberry Pi as there isn't enough time left to write the software all over again and I still have to get the Raspberry Pi showing something on the display. It doesn't really matter as the display is not synchronised to the motors in any way.
Dubbie
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