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pyRcCar: a python RC car driving app

Intro

This repo provides an easy way to control a hobby RC car using a python application.

The python app takes input from a joystick and controls the RC car via the arduino board as shown in the diagram. (Note that the arduino board runs the standard firmata sketch)

Refer to the below block diagram to understand where things fits in.

block diagram

Result

car in action

Here I am using the 188$ Latte Panda Delta (LP-D) board (quad core Intel(R) Celeron(R) N4100 CPU and 4GB RAM).  As shown in the block-diagram above LattePanda combines both the x86 CPU and the Connected Arduino into a single board. The board is enclosed into a nice case and is powered by a USB-C PD battery which is sandwiched between the RC car chasis and the LP-D board (using poster putty for now:-))

Drive instructions

  • Calibrate the car by adjusting the PWM limits and Arduino channels in config.py file
  • ssh into the car computer
  • Put the car in a safe plave where wheels are not touching the ground
  • Start js_drive.py via sudo python3 js_drive.py
jithu@jithu-lp:~/master/pred_mt/lp/v2_dky$ sudo python3 js_drive.py
loading config file: config.py
final settings:

config loaded
Adding part LogitechJoystickController.

pymata_aio Version 2.33	Copyright (c) 2015-2018 Alan Yorinks All rights reserved.

Using COM Port:/dev/ttyACM0

Initializing Arduino - Please wait... 
Arduino Firmware ID: 2.5 StandardFirmata.ino
Auto-discovery complete. Found 30 Digital Pins and 12 Analog Pins


PWM Steering created
Init ESC
PWM Throttle created
Adding part PWMSteering.
Adding part PWMThrottle.
Opening /dev/input/js0...
Starting vehicle at 20 Hz
Device name: Logitech Gamepad F710

Acknowledgemets

This project is based on the awesome donkeycar project, which is a self driving library for such RC cars. Here are the differences

  • Simplifies the learning curve by removing bulk of the stuff (self driving related) from donkeycar project. This makes it easy for a maker to tinker and experiment with the car.
  • Adds support for Arduino boards. Donkeycar primarily needs boards having physical pins (for i2c bus like raspberry Pi / Jetson nano). (I intend to contribute arduino stuff back to donkey project once it is mature)

Originally I got interested in self driving RC cars from this project