KSmRover

KSmRover is a remote controlled robot which can be used on a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 brick or mindsensors.com PiStorms. The latter can be used with a picamera to view live videofeed where it's moving.

The program runs on the ev3dev operating system, so be sure it's running on the EV3-brick or Raspberry Pi. More information about ev3dev can be found on: www.ev3dev.org.

The program is a Flask application: it runs a webserver on the robot so it can be controlled from a mobile device with touchscreen. Be sure Flask is installed on your device:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python3-flask

For developing this application, the Mega Flask tutorial of Miguel Grinberg was a great source. You can find it here. When you read this tutorial I'm sure you understand the structure of my application.

On the robot you start the application by running:

$ ./start_KSmRover.sh

Be sure this script is executable. If not, run:

$ chmod a+x start_KSmROver.sh

When the webserver is started, open the homepage of the application on your mobile device:

http://<ip-address-robot>:5000/

You will see the homepage of the robot. On the EV3-brick you can open the touch-page to use the touch userinterface. The green dot works like a joystick, you can move your finger around. At the center the robot will stop, when you move your finger to the top, the robot will move formward. Or when you move your finger to the right, it will move that way. You can adjust the driving speed by varying the distance between your finger and the center of the dot.

When using the PiStorms with Raspberry Pi, you got the same touch userinterface. But there is more: on the camera-page you see a live video-feed (be sure a picamera is attached to the pi). This video-feed contains the same touch control capabilities. So by touching the video and point your finger into the direction you want to go, the robot will drive in that direction.

You'll find more information (including a video) on my website.

Have fun!

Kees Smit