Hey there. That’s really awesome to see your photos, thanks for sharing. I’ll have to be quick because I’m up early for a meeting over seas and only have a few minutes to contribute.

The ezb is still your best choice for hardware over alternatives. That’s because of the convenience of connecting servos and such vs arduino needing shields.  So you’re on the right track there.

The only reason to choose an Arduino, in my opinion, is if you’re going to modify the ezb firmware for custom low level things. In your case, sounds like that’s not a thing.

I agree wifi is terrible for conventions and concentrated areas. Heck, I have trouble with wifi in large cities! So your solution will be to replace the wifi with usb. That’ll work amazing - and for a robot with an embedded pc, a no brainer.

here is the link to converting the ezb to usb. Keep in mind that it’s titled incorrectly because iotiny does not support this feature: https://www.ez-robot.com/learn-robotics-serial-usb-connectivity-ezb-smart-robot-controller.html

i am confident that you won’t have any issues with usb

This is a post I remember that discusses WiFi at conventions.

Click Here. See post number #11. Hope this can help you.

Many thanks for the quick reaction.

I will first try EZ-B via USB/serial connection and see if that works for me, my fingers are crossed.

I have rewired R2D2 to get the EZ-B's connected to the NUC (through the slipping, etc). Also updated my software. So, now the 3 EZ-B's have a wired connection. It is stable while running in my living room, and I am curious how it will hold in a convention setting. A positive by-product is that I got rid of the pesky windows configurations with multiple WIFI dongles. It always needed manual checking that the right wifi dongle was connected to the right EZ-B and not e.g. 2 dongles trying to connect to the same EZ-B. With multiple Serial/TTL Adapters, Windows seems consistent/persistent on the COM port allocation when restarting usb-hub/pc/EZ-B/etc. In other words, I can start R2D2, and it all connects automatically and correctly without manual intervention. I have two open points I still need to figure out:

• EZ-B hangs when it tries to read an I2C connection that does not respond (e.g. because the Arduino is down that the EZ-B tries to read, or RC is turned off). The same code did not hang the EZ-B with a wifi connection but does hang the EZ-B with a wired connection.

#----------------------------------------#
# Script to read RC signals via Arduino  #
#----------------------------------------#

#Init
$RC_SC_mem = false
$RC_rud_mem=0
$Input_I2C="error init value"
$RC_address = 8
#Read in several post you first need to write to a register before you can read but looks like not needed anymore in latest release
#I2CWrite( 1, $RC_address, 0x68 )
:Loopforever

#Loop

if (IsConnected(1)=false)
  # Wait and try again
  sleep(500)
  goto(Loopforever)
endif

$Input_I2C=I2CRead(1, $RC_address,7 )
#print($Input_I2C)

# control checks

if (Length($Input_I2C)!=7)
  goto(Loopforever)
endif

if (GetCharat($Input_I2C,6)!="c")
  # very simple control byte, if not c the data is garbled
  goto(Loopforever)
endif

# More code below (deleted) to handle the I2C input

Is there some try-except construction I could use? Or some other obvious thing I miss?

• I would like a feature to reboot an EZ-B just in case it hangs. E.g. If you connect to the EZ-B via the web interface and change settings, there is this green update and reboot button. is there an SW reboot equivalent command?

Thank for all the help!

Welcome back! It sounds like you are doing great with your R2. It's such a professional build.

I'll address your second question as best as I can:

Quote:

I would like a feature to reboot an EZ-B just in case it hangs. E.g. If you connect to the EZ-B via the web interface and change settings, there is this green update and reboot button. is there an SW reboot equivalent command?

The only thing I can think of (and this is kind of sketchy) would be:

*Have an IoTiny in your build that starts with the robot, connects and stays connected to ARC the whole time. *Have this Iotiny dedicated and connected to a Arduino compatible relay that has the other EZB's power running through it (or one relay for each EZB).  *You could have your INT script or any other looping script then looking to see if any of the EZB's failed to connect or lost a connection. There is a EZ Script command that will check a WIFI connection. I'm not sure it will watch a com port connection though. There may be other commands that would do that.  *If a failed connection or lost connection is detected you can have that script send a command to the connected IoTiny attached to the relay to power cycle the disabled EZB. You would need to have that script wait till the ezb powers up and send a new connection command to the offending EZB.  *You could even manually send a reboot command to operate the reboot relay connected to the EZB's from ARC.

Just some thoughts. Maybe a bit much though but all I can think of.

Great idea with the relays, I have had the annoying disconnect from WI FI for at least 5 years now, then any robot I have goes mindlessly ramming into walls,LoL!

Finally, I was able to repair the Arduino code so that EZ-B does not hang. See this post: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/Can-I-read-the-signal-from-an-RC-receiver-19798 with the Arduino code that works for a wifi connected EZ-B and Arduino code that works for a serial/USB connected EZ-B. Lots of trail-and-error.

Indeed "It would be nice to be able to simply send a command to reboot. However, the problem is, if the EZB is locked up, there is nothing to send a command to". I like your relay suggestion. A relay that cut/reboot the power for an EZ-B is then probably the best choice. I have a NUC/PC onboad with the ARC SW running, it detects if an EZ-B is not connected and could operate (via eg IoTiny, or some other board) the relay.