Rover hardware

• Robotic Base/Chassis
  • Skid steer 2-wheel, 4-wheel or tracked base with independent gearmotors for each side.
  • Pan/tilt servos (standard hobby servos)
    • Towerpro 9G servos and this Thingiverse design
    • Towerpro MG90 has metal gears instead of plastic, so a little heavier duty.
• Raspberry Pi
  • Raspberry Pi Model 3 B, which saves you buying a WiFi dongle and gives the most processing power
  • Raspberry Pi Camera Module
    • USB Web Cam as an alternative, though would require adapted code. Still investigating which works best.
  • WiFi dongle see this link for full list of compatible WiFi adapters.
  • microSD card, link for compatibility list
• Electronics
  • Arduino Nano (could be substituted for another model of Arduino)
  • Motor driver
    • L293D (capable of 2 motors at 1.2A peak)
    • L298N alternative which can handle 3A Output.
    • For larger robots which require higher power motor drivers further research is required.
• Power supply
  • LiPo Battery
  • BEC (What is a BEC)

NB Links provided are indicative only may not represent best price/supplier.

Setting up a virgin Raspberry Pi 3 for use as a MoonsRover1

sudo raspi-config and expand file system, enable camera, disable serial terminal

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install git python-pip python-picamera

sudo pip flask flask-cors pyserial

git clone https://github.com/MAKLab/MoonsRover1.git

To disable onboard Pi3 Bluetooth and restore UART0/ttyAMA0 over GPIOs 14 & 15 modify:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Add to the end of the file

dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

We also need to run to stop BT modem trying to use UART

sudo systemctl disable hciuart

reboot Pi (sudo shutdown -r now)