The latte panda also has an arduino built in (Leonardo if I am not mistaken}... and they are pretty frugal on power. If I remember correctly I think I measured somewhere between 1 and 1.2 amps?....

Hi Dunning-Kruger

That's the one he went with ;-) Maybe I should look at that, looks like they are a couple of hundred for a basic one, and has an arduino built it, very tempting. If I went this way I think I would like the bot to have a base station it automatically returns to for charging, like a robovac. (You've opened up a whole new can of worms now) lol

Hi Dj Guess plans are changing ;-) I still connect wirelessly to EZ-B / Iotiny even with the Latte Panda in the bot, don't I, or is there a cable available?

Future plans are for my next bot to be your Wall-e (cute lil fella) or a stationary bot that was going to have the Nuc in the base, controlling multiple bots. but I think this Latte Panda idea is a goer.

If you have a computer in the robot, you can probably get away with using the onboard Arduino as an EZ-B and not need an EZ-B v4 or IoTiny at all.

But, if you decide to also add an EZ-B v4 to the robot with the onboard computer, don't use an IoTiny. This is because the EZ-B v4 can be configured to hook to the PC via USB TTL. So that means you won't need wifi at all.

The charging is quite easy actually. The only trouble is the physical design. It's best to use an iRobot Roomba as the base, and that way the whole process is done for you. The only downside to the iRobot is the navigation to the base station is random. Meaning, the robot drives around until it detects the base station beacon. That's pretty normal for most systems like that though, without a complex navigation system.

The topic of navigation is something everyone's been trying to solve for long time. The lidar approach works to "sort of" get you in the area. But the trouble with lidar is the lack of standardization. At ez-robot, we had created a lidar with a slam control that was going to be sold - but the price to manufacturer was too high. I'm always looking for modular solutions, not single-use specific solutions. I like the idea of something working in any environment, and there isn't a good solution for that. Well, the IPS would work, but the market was way too small for us to move ahead with it. The IPS is now open source, so anyone can make one. The trouble is the cost to make anything like that requires mass quantities (in the thousands) and there aren't enough customers to support that quantity.

I got off topic a bit... but the answer to your question about self docking is either a Roomba or Glyph as visual beacon. The glyph works really well for docking, that's how our omnilab telepresense do it. You can see the details in the getting started section under the product list. They simply have a camera that looks for the glyph and aligns the robot to it.

It's quite easy to do using the camera control's variable speed turning option. You simply select the checkbox in the config of the camera control and the robot will use variable speed to keep the object centered. It's very specific.

I just found https://synthiam.com/GettingStarted/Build-Robots/LattePanda-18256 & https://synthiam.com/Community/Tutorials/LattePanda-Beginners-Guide-18552

Yer I was wondering if using the glyth system would be accurate enough to work for homing to a charge station.

I like your face/voice regoc and the glyph tutorials you've done with EZ-B, will face/voice and glyth using the panda and arduino by itself work as well as they do with the EZ-B?

The processing for all that is done on the pc (aka latte panda). So ya, it’s all the same

the EZ-B v4 or Arduino EZ-B do the same thing. All you miss is the camera and audio connector that the Arduino doesn’t have. Which is ok because you have an onboard pc and use usb camera and it’s sound card

Of course lol

So ARC will find the usb camera connected to the LattePanda for face and glyth recog?

@stevethurston.... Yes a usb camera that is recognized by Windows will do the same thing as the ez robot camera....

@DJ Sures

Loved ya vids on LattePanda, ya just like a lil kid when ya play with ya toys, then again, isnt that partly why we all have our hobbies.

Its a done deal, got one on the way, should have it to play with by next weekend

I think they will be my go to for the brain from here on, guess my Ez and arduino brains are getting added to the, "will use one day toy box"

Thanks Dunning-Kruger and DJ for your help and sugestions :-)))