Sunday, February 24, 2013

Raspberry Pi Installation into Neato XV11 Robot

Just put the finishing touches on installing the Raspberry Pi embedded Linux computer into the Neato XV11 robot.

Following the guide at Dave's Home Robotics Notes I disassembled the Neato Vacuum, tapped the battery for 5V using a DC-DC converter per Ben's idea , and installed a Raspberry Pi in place of where the dustbin usually goes.

Cable management is extremely important in this configuration as the Pi is more consumer friendly with its plugs which means a bit of pain for us electronic geeks wielding soldering irons.   Having said that I didnt want to solder directly on the Pi board, so I managed to jam most of the cables / DC-DC into the blower area underneath the turret.  Because the Laser ( LIDAR ) is so close to the top of the robot, I needed to make sure everything in the dustbin area is as flat as possible.

Unfortunately I discovered that there doesnt appear to be an API command for the robot to return to its charger, and  signal strength may not be available through its API as well for a more obvious solution, so I would appear that my first task is to get a spatial Neural Network setup for this specific purpose.  More on this later....





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