DonkeyCar: Raspberry Pi Controlled Robot Car

By -

Last summer, I worked with students at Waupaca Middle School to create robotic cars. We started building from instructions from donkeycar.com, to build cars powered by Raspberry Pi computers.



This process was technical, but my students did much of the heavy lifting. I created the disk images for the students, and my 3d printer was printing some of the largest parts ahead of time for our two week course. We were successful in creating drivable cars, within a week! 

Here is a list of what the students did:

  • Disassemble necessary parts of the car
  • Assembly.
  • Mounting battery.
  • Finding the codes for calibrating the cars.
  • 3d printing parts.
  • programing in their codes, 
  • launching the driving website.
  • designing a road course for the cars.
  • connecting a tablet to drive their car.
  • driving the cars.
  • and learning to fix the cars... when they didn't work so well.

Here is the process that we followed.




We have more work to do... but the platform has options to expand.  Looking in the future to work on the autonomous driving programming. Also it would be great to find a more permanent course for our cars. I would love to have a bit of a community of other drivers that want to come together work!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Mac won't load the Users & Groups preference pane: Fix

By -
Image
I had recently had a Mac on Lion unable to load the Users & Groups Preference Pane.   Like this: My IT support had suggested reimaging the computer.  Reinstalling the Operating System, reloading the applications, and transferring back the User information from Time Machine Backup. Well, after doing all of that, the problem reappeared immediately.  I scoured through Apple Support Communities and found this fix.  For some reason, some transparent users are showing up in your system.  They need to be deleted.  But since you cannot load Users & Groups... it becomes a problem. Here is the solution / procedure. Quit System Preferences.   Launch Terminal.  (Applications/Utilities/Terminal)   Copy & Paste these commands. sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest press enter Terminal may ask for your Administrator Password, enter that. sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest1 press enter Terminal may ask for your Administrator Password, enter that. Rel
Read more

Creating QR codes!

By -
Image
Link to my website... I have been away from my blog for a long time... It’s been a while since creating my last blog post. It’s about time to get back on the horse.  Creating QR Codes. Super simple tool for getting links and information out to people in a passive way.  Got a concert? Why print off a program when you can have people grab a link from the qr code and look at it on their phones. Making stations for your classroom? Why not make the instructions for the station as a QR code... I like goqr.me as a generator for other items such as contacts and email links. This video below shows how to use chrome and goqr.me to make QR codes on a desktop computer.  #artschultzblog #edtech #qrcodes via IFTTT
Read more

Spike Prime Printable Blocks

By -
Image
As I prepare for coaching Middle Schoolers here in Waupaca for FIRST Lego League, I am trying to teach kids to code the SPIKE Prime Lego robots. This has its challenges. Some kids take to coding well, and some need more visuals to guide them. Teams may also want to whiteboard out their coding concepts.  I created this set of printable Word Blocks as a resource for printing, laminating, and maybe adding some magnets to the back. This allows me to put up code in a demonstration, or my teams to talk about how to achieve things after they have done some pseudo-coding of their projects. Having manipulative items are always nice for hands-on coding practice.  Whiteboard Word blocks for Proportional Line follow. Here is my collection of laminated word blocks Below are the files I created for creating these blocks. Feel free to use, but maybe send me a note & follow on twitter. @artschultz13 Direct link to folder shown below.
Read more