Wednesday, 22 December 2010
BigTrak + IGEP
So here's what I've done with the BigTrak so far. I've mounted the IGEP on the back, mbed in the nose and arranged battery power for all the electronics and set up WiFi to remote control it. Boring technical details are at http://www.srimech.com/projects/bigtrak/. The audio on the video is poor, sorry about that. I wanted to be able to hear the motors and my voice is pretty soft at the best of times.
Annoyingly, the biggest challenge by far has been getting the drivers working on the IGEP. It's a neat board, but not very popular so there isn't much community support out there for it. It took me a couple of weeks to get WiFi and usb-acm (necessary to talk to the mbed) working at the same time, and the next challenge is to get it to recognise a USB webcam.
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11 comments:
Nice! The improved speed and manoeuvrability is really impressive. Quite a shock when you're used to the standard model . . .
Can't wait for the webcam to get working!
Hi, great mod! I was given a BT for Christmas and will be doing similar brain replacement therapy to mine. I'm wondering about the Speed controllers you used, are they the FR15s? If so, thats pretty much overkill isn't it, I was planning on using a L293D h-bridge. How much current do you think the motors pull when stalled?
cheers
Jim
They're 43HXs which aren't made anymore, but I think they correspond to the FR15 models. Yes, they are way over the top for the BigTrak's motors, I just happened to have them spare. No idea about stall current, sorry.
cool, I'll take some measurements on the current and post it up on my site once I've opened it up. Right now I'm having more fun than I expected with it in it's stock config :)
BTW did you ever work out what the difference was in the 'Carpet' or 'Wooden Floor' setting on the power switch, did that affect how the clutch was used?
Mine didn't have such a switch; that must be a later addition.
What distro are you using for the igep? I have just put Linaro (Ubuntu 10.10) on there and I too am having issues with the Wifi.
Any chance you could provide some info on how you did this please?
Thanks!
encima, I got Ubuntu 9.04 on there using the instructions at http://labs.igep.es/index.php/How_to_get_the_Ubuntu_distribution. It's currently running a version of OpenBricks. I wrote down some notes on that at http://www.srimech.com/projects/bigtrak/, but that's really just a brain dump and not a very well written guide. I haven't tried Linaro yet, and might well give that a go next time I pick the BigTrak up.
Thanks, I managed to get the Ubuntu on there fine. Tried many distros but liked that the Linaro has a build especially for the IGEp.
Looking at the instructions, I think I just need basic step by step stuff as I am very (read: VERY) new to linux and any help is appreciated.
Here is what I have done: copied the two bin files to lib/firmware. Um, yeah, thats about it as I cannot seem to get it to build.
Thank you so much for any help you can provide, even if it is just an image of the SD card as Linaro is not a necessity for me.
If you're new to Linux I'm afraid getting anything going on the IGEP is probably going to be quite a steep learning curve. I can't really offer any more help on this as I'm working flat out on another project, sorry.
No problem, I appreciate the help you have given and I am sure I will do better to learn it myself.
Just discovered the IGEP forum so hopefully will learn something there!
Thanks again.
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