Both these were fairly trivial. The hard one was DC motor control with a relay.
On to speed and position control in next session.
Conversation
Status: I’ve learned to use the following things from the kit. 31 of 54 components. Gonna have to design my own learning experiments for all the others.
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Spent an hour looking up what seem to be really finicky beaglebone blue JST-SH and ZH connectors. Why couldn’t they use more standard ones?
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Trying to use this single-board robotics-specific computer to simplify my life, but realizing there are downsides now. None of these headers are the usual sizes. Anyone used this BBBlue board for a project?
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Setting up for soldering phase of learning curve. Made smol hack with ventilation tube and shoebox so fume extractor pumps solder fumes out instead of recirculating. Air quality got pretty bad the first couple of times so figured this was needed.
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I’d already bought the fan when I realized it wouldn’t do, but they sell a model with attached tube and light for $10 more. This hack is about $10 for the tube, and a few pennies worth of painters tape. But if you’re shopping just buy the tube model.
amazon.com/gp/product/B00
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Though my tube is a bit tougher (plastic-coated aluminum), so that’s good.
I was going to 3D print an adapter plate to bolt on but the 4 screws aren’t long enough. Future yak shave.
PM2.5 *really* blows up around soldering and I’m a bit sensitive so all mitigation helps.
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Continuing my "beyond the kit" adventures, managed to get an L293D H-bridge circuit going to do directional motor control. Unfortunately, the delicate motor leads ripped off while I was playing around and before I could take a video. Now I have a solder-repair job to do.
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Latest adventure, ultrasonic sensor. This one was simple enough. Just 4 pins to control echo ranging.
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Well, it works. Beam is very narrow though. Like 15 degrees maybe? Wonder how closely you can space these guys. Could I put like 6-8 of them around my rover for 360 degree and do SLAM? They can share power and ground but each requires 2 pins. Maybe poll them with a selector bit?
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Nice intro by on moving from the arduino IDE to Platform io. I might do this for future arduino experiments.

