-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 4
Home
Welcome to the Wiki for the Bavarian Builders' BBDroids project! Here we collect documentation about the software we are using to run our droids and remote controls. As the software progresses, the Wiki will be updated; we try to keep it up to date. When in doubt, the source is the reference though 😄
I hope I'm not making things too complicated, but here's the thing: We intend to support different droids with the software, electronics, and this Wiki, although at the moment most people are perusing it for D-Ov2Evo. Therefore here is an overview over the structure, with links to the individual pages.
WE MEAN IT.
D-O is small and cute but is not an easy build by any means, although we're trying to make it a lot easier. You need at least:
- (A friend with) A well calibrated printer capable of printing at least PLA+, PETG, and TPU, although a printer with an enclosure is highly recommended so you can print ABS or ASA.
- Some soldering skills. Our electronics come pre-soldered with the SMD parts but you will need to solder some through hole components. Issues caused by bad solder connections are very hard to debug remotely. Adafruit has an excellent soldering tutorial.
- Basic skills with a multimeter, for checking connections ("buzzing through") and measuring voltages, resistance and currents.
- Some skills in flashing and testing Arduino code (BTW we use PlatformIO for most of our development).
- A lot of patience and frustration tolerance testing and tuning your droid. The path is hard but the reward is great.
The reason why we write the above is that this is a project run by two people, who both have demanding long hour day jobs and sometimes like to tinker on non-D-O things. We will often not be able to offer immediate support, and it is harder for us to support electric issues that cannot be diagnosed in software. So it's a good idea to try take things slow, be well prepared, and try to diagnose yourself as much as you can.
- Make sure you have read the FAQ Page.
- Make sure you have read through all of the relevant documentation here.
- Make sure you have run whatever goes wrong with your droid with the serial console connected, and checked the output and messages there. They often have precise info on what's going wrong (although it's not always easy to understand).
- Join the Bavarian Builders' Facebook Group and ask for help in the discussion groups there, but please do so only after you've followed steps 1-3 above. Well do join the group regardless :-) but do steps 1-3 before asking for help.
- Building and Installing the Software - Please refer to this for the tools you need to build the BBDroids software, and flash it on the remotes and the droids.
- Using Droid and Remote Software - this introduces concepts all the BBDroids software relies on: serial and wifi consoles, running / stopping subsystems, system status, parameters, persistent storage, ...
- Remote Control Summary - Introduces some core concepts about our remote controls that will help you understand how they operate.
- Building the Remote Controls - describes how to build and test the RC hardware.
- Remote Control Usage - has usage instructions for the Remote Controls.
- Remote Control Protocol and API Reference - has information for developers on how to use our remotes for your own droids.
- D-Ov2Evo Summary - has the BOM, documentation collection etc. for the D-Ov2Evo droid.
- D-Ov2Evo Power and Main Board Build Instructions - has instructions how to build the electronics for D-Ov2Evo (which are the same as the electronics for BB8 and likely other droids later).
- D-Ov2Evo Hardware Build Instructions - tells you where to find step-by-step instructions on how to build the (3D printed) hardware for the D-Ov2Evo droid.
- D-Ov2Evo Motion Tuning - tells you how to make your D-O droid behave exactly the way you want it to.
- D-Ov2Evo Sounds - contains an overview over the SD card structure and how D-O looks for sounds to play.
- D-Ov2Evo Usage - tells you how to drive and operate your droid.
- D-Ov2Evo Caveats and FAQ - is ESSENTIAL READING before you operate your droid, because it contains a list of what-could-possibly-go-wrong, and a list of problems others have had before you.
- D-Ov2Evo Electronics Reference - has all the details on cabling, pin connections, cable colors, etc.
- D-Ov2Evo Control Concept Reference - has the details on which parameters affect D-O's motion in which way.
- Encoder Motor Calibration - We consequently use encoder motors and velocity control, which requires some calibration to set up. This has a step-by-step guide on how to obtain good control parameters.