MechMind

This project is software to control an Astromech style remote-controlled droid. While the author took inspiration from several existing projects, including:

• PenumbraShadowMD
• SHADOW MD
• PADAWAN360

MechMind has been designed and implemented from the ground-up to act as the central processing unit for a droid, accepting input stimuli from various sources, interpreting that input, and generating output commands to various actuators or light controllers. Some of these commands are executed locally, but most are delegated to external subsystems.

It is designed to run exclusively on ESP32 based microcontrollers and to be compiled from the PlatformIO development environment. This is a departure from many previous projects that attempt to embed everything into a single sketch. While adding some complexity to the build process, it also provides an opportunity to provide flexibility that has been missing up to this point.

Key Features

• Extensible Controller Support:

  • Supports multiple game controllers including:
    • Single/Dual Bluetooth Sony Move Controllers
    • Generic PS3 Bluetooth controllers
    • Generic Xbox Bluetooth Controllers (Coming soon)
    • Widely available Bluetooth Low Energy Ring style "VR controllers"
    • Custom ESPNow based controllers (Future implementation)
  • Unlike existing control software, which often supports only one specific controller, MechMind allows you to pick the controller that best suits your particular situation.

• Actuator/Light Control:

  • Designed to leverage several existing external solutions such as:
    • Marcduino boards
    • AstroPixel boards
    • Various sound boards:
      • Teensy based Human-Cyborg Relations sound generator
      • Sparkfun MP3 Trigger
      • DF Robotics DFMini MP3 player
      • DY-HV20T Playback module (Coming soon)
    • Motor drivers:
      • Dimension Engineering Sabertooth dual motor drivers
      • Dimension Engineering Syren single motor drivers
      • PWM based motor drivers such as:
        • DRV8871 based single motor drivers
        • L298N based dual motor drivers
  • Also provides direct support for:
    • Adafruit PCA9685 Servo/PWM drivers

• Platform:

  • Designed exclusively for ESP32 based boards.
  • Supports both standard breakout boards and the Penumbra ESP32 board.
  • The Penumbra ESP32 is required if you plan to use a controller that requires a USB/Bluetooth dongle such as the Sony, PS3 or XBox controllers. The Penumbra ESP32 with USB Host Mode support is sold by Astromech.net user skelmir) and is a wonderful platform for MechMind.

Documentation

Here is an initial set of documentation:

• ControlFlow
• DriverConfig
• ConsoleCommands
• ConfigValues
• CommandBNF
• TriggerDocumentation

Getting Started

This needs to be rewritten to actually be helpful...

To get started with the MechMind Program, follow the steps below:

1. Hardware Setup:

   • Ensure your ESP32 board is properly connected and configured.
   • If using USB Host Mode, connect the necessary Bluetooth dongle.

2. Software Installation:

   • Clone this repository to your local machine.
   • Required libraries and dependencies should automatically download

3. Configuration:

   • Define your input controllers and actuators in the hardware.h configuration file
     • This can also be changed at runtime
   • Upload the firmware to your ESP32 board.

4. Running the Program:

   • Power on your droid and test the input and output functions.

License

This source code is open-source and can be freely used, modified, and distributed for any non-commercial purposes. For any commercial use, you must obtain a separate license from the author.

Author: Kizmit99 License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

For more information, visit MechMind GitHub Repository.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read the contributing guidelines and submit your pull requests.

Contact

For questions, suggestions, or commercial licensing inquiries, please contact the author via GitHub.