My unofficial attempt at the Picasso Design Challenge is coming to an end, which is good as time is running out. I have connected everything needed to the Raspberry Pi 3B+, NOOBs SD card, mouse, display, keyboard and power and now it is time to turn everything on.
Apparently nothing happened, but it was just taking a few seconds to get going and put something on the display, because as soon as I stopped the video, the display sprang into life! I then had to setup the system - which all the documentation I saw said was really easy, but this is only true if you have already done something similar. I did not know whether to click on the Initial OS to SD card button or not! The last time I clicked on a button that looked like it might need clicking I wiped out all the programming in the servo motors on my xArm robot arm. It is still not yet working properly again. eventually I did click on that button and it did indeed install the operating system. It also managed to connected to my local WiFi hub and update itself ! All without going wrong. I was well impressed - it's not Windows is it!
I was then able to use the browser to find a suitable image of a Picasso painting to show on the display. I think it looks mostly OK. The image in the video below seems a bit blurred at times, I think this might be the autofocus on the camera having a few problems with the glass front of the LCD display. But I think that the resolution and colour look good. Hopefully, the V2 camera will also produce images that are just as good.
I have replaced the battery pack with a mains DC power supply which seems to have solved the problems with the direction motors, mostly. It is now moving backwards and forwards nicely, plus all the motor units are turning together, just about all together. There is still some problem occasionally, although I'm not entirely sure what it is. Possibly some cables from the Raspberry Pi are interfering with the motor units - it doesn't take much to upset them. There is also some sort of design issue as when the motor units turn, because the point of contact of the wheel is not directly below the axle of the motor, there is an additional turning torque applied to the whole system. Sometimes this isn't visible and sometimes it results in a slight turning of the display. It seems to depend on the slippiness of the tyres and surface.
So all the functionality of the chassis, motor units and display have all been implemented and are working (mostly anyway). All that remains now is to add the camera and get live pictures and then get it to continuously display a live image.
Does anyone know the easiest method of getting the camera to continuously display the live image? I have seen an example of making a video using the camera V2 but I do not want a video I just want the live image displayed. At the moment I also cannot get the image to occupy the entire display, the Raspberry Pi operating system menu bars are still visible at the top. I'm sure it must be possible to get rid of them - but not permanently!
Dubbie