Code for the Winter 2019 MTE 380 Mechatronics Engineering Design Workshop course. The project was to build an autonomous robot that could navigate a given course (shown in the demo gif) and perform actions such as detecting lego houses and extinuishing a flame. The mechanical and electrical design/layout of the robot itself are not included in this repo.
Sensor interfacing and signal conditioning/classification is supported for the following sensors:
- MPU6050 IMU
- TCS3200 color sensor
- YG1006 Flame sensor module
- Ambient light sensing photodiode
- Hall sensor effect array
- VL53L1X and VL6180X IR laser rangefinders
- Cytron MO-SPG-30E-030K motor encoders
The following actuators are supported:
- Hobby servo motors
- High rpm dc motor (fan)
- Cytron MO-SPG-30E-030K
- Includes feedback loop for speed P-control and trajectory shaping/gain scheduling
Elements of the robot's functionality are broken down into tasks, which are run via a cooperative, non-preemptive scheduler (https://github.com/arkhipenko/TaskScheduler). The tasks are setup in main.cpp, and each task has it's own .cpp/.h files in the src/task folder. Note that tasks can enable/disable themselves and others, as well as reconfigure parameters such as their period. Tasks run roughly in the order that they are declared in main.cpp except for when they have different periods.
Interrupts are avoided except for setting flags. The exception here is for the motor interrupts, which set the current motor speed.
We're using PlatformIO to manage our code and board dependancies. Here's the getting started guide: https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/ide/vscode.html#installation
Make sure you install for VSCode instead of Atom on Windows. The PlatformIO ide provides the build, flash, and serial monitor in the bottom toolbar. The board settings are in the platformio.ini file.
Current options are kept both in the platformio.ini file and in the common.h file. These options are flags that determine what funcionality we run. For example, if RUN_IMU is not defined we will not initialize or use the IMU.
Debugging: The XBEE on the robot in connected to Serial3 and is to be used for logging sensor readings. The XBEE serial port is passed via the PLOTTER_SERIAL macro which is set in platformio.ini. The main USB serial is for debug purposes. Use the DEBUG_PRINT (defined in common.h) macro to print instead of Serial.println.
Using the XBEE for Remote Debugging: Sensor values will print over the XBEE radio link. You should have another XBEE module hooked up to your computer via usb. You can then open it as a generic serial port, which will work with Putty, SerialPlot, or the Arduino Plotter listener. If the serial port does not appear and the module appears to be on, you may need to download the XBEE driver software: https://www.digi.com/products/iot-platform/xctu
- SerialPlot: to plot recieved sensor readings in real time: https://hackaday.io/project/5334-serialplot-realtime-plotting-software
- Arduino Plotter: we use this library on the arduino side in order to send the sensor values in a nice format over serial. In order to plot them on a graph you will need the plotter listener running. See https://github.com/devinaconley/arduino-plotter
- Putty: you can open a com/serial port with Putty to see what is going on