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Asked — Edited

Gps Functionality

Any plans to expand on the GPS functionality of the software? Navigation... In the near future?
Thanks for your hard work, and a great product!


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#1  
Thanks! There is full gps navigation that uses the gps control. They are in the form of ez script commands - the most important is Gpsstop().
#2  
GPSstop is great. From my understanding you can set up an area around a set of coordinates that will cause a function to happen if the robot gets inside that adjustable area. I want to be able to send my robot to a set of coordinates and have the robot move to that point. If it could move between a list of waypoints would be great. I'm wanting to have my robot eventually mow my back field by itself. With me watching of course, just to make sure I don't mow over the dog or something else... LOL... Do you know of an example of a script that might make this work? What other GPS commands are available in the scripting? Thanks again so much for your work and evolution of the product. I love the ez-bits part of the evolved software. I think Santa might just bring me a 3d printer for Christmas.... :)
#3  
Will ARC see and use a gps that is connected to the usb port of your notebook attached to your robot ? I have one left over from microsoft's streets and maps.
#4  
@MovieMaker - I believe it will. The trick is to get the GPS sentences that it sends to the software into the right format. You might have to tinker around with the sentence settings to get it working. The GPS I use is a bluetooth GPS that connects to the laptop via a bluetooth connection and it works great. I haven't seen any examples of scripts to allow navigation, but they do have the GPSstop command that will halt the robot if it gets inside a predetermined distance from the coordinates that are set. If anyone has an example of script that would allow navigation, please share it with us.
#6  
I am not sure how useful GPS is to EZ-Robot... Unless I am missing something here your PC would have to be on board the robot itself and connected to an extended wifi network (how far can you expect to travel)? Also with only 1 - 2 metre accuracy (at best) short distance would be useless as well... I am with DJ and his Camera based indoor localization system... GPS I will leave to a standalone microcontroller like the Basic AtomPro...
#7  
If you mount an Acer W3 tablet on the robot. It will have windows8 and take up a very small space. But, again the accuracy of the GPS probably won't be good.
United Kingdom
#8  
You could mount a bluetooth based GPS (or even "convert" one to bluetooth) to save an on board PC but the range will suffer, and at that short a range GPS would be pointless since it's accuracy is within 1 meter (at the very best, outside, clear skies etc.)

GPS has it's uses but it's too inaccurate for use on any robots I plan to build. It's not the most accurate in my sat navs (both TomToms, Audi onboard, iPhone and HTC) struggle in some areas and often think I'm in a field to the side of the road).

On a side note, for GPS to be worthwhile the robot would need to roam a large area and as such an onboard PC would probably be required since Bluetooth range is not near wide enough and WiFi (depending on setup) could also be too small a range.
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