Long lasting Roli

thetechguru

USA
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Step one of getting ready to experiment with NMS was to make Roli run more than 15 minutes on a charge.   A little surgical procedure with a dremel, and he now has a 7200 mah battery inside the body.

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Alan

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PRO
Canada
#2  
nice are you going to power SBC and camera off same battery?
#3  
@Nink  not att his time.  The computer has a battery of its own, and this is just a test platform for what will be a scratch build that will probably use SLA batteries.  I just wanted more run time than the 1300 mah would give me, and all my 1300's were dead and swollen so I needed a new one anyway.
PRO
Canada
#4  
I had a similar problem with EZ Six robot. Battery was completely discharged after few days. looks swollen now too. Will not re charge either. Dont want fire so will need to add my larger R.C. battery.
#5  
I also picked up a couple of 1300mah from Amazon that are the same size as the EZ-Robot provided ones without the insane shipping fees, one for 6 and the other for adventurebot.  Interestingly, I ordered a bunch of EZ-Bits from EZ-Robot to use up the last of my credit from answering questions when the forum was there, and they charged me $25 for DHL international shipping, but then shipped UPS from Utah.  I guess they got some storage space in the US.  Those are on the truck for delivery today.

Not sure how big a battery I could squeeze into a Six, but it would be nice to get longer run time from it too.

Alan
#6  
Hello Alan,
  Looking forward to your navigation project, because I eventually want to get ARC Pro and try navigation.
I think I could learn from your build, and gain helpful details.  I am a little slower learning now, but want to try new things.
Thanks,
Steve S
#7  
@Steve S,

This is the beginning of my dream for a home robot.  There are really three things I want the robot to do, and this can make one of them happen (with some hardware work), and is the beginning of the second.

1) Self dock for charging.  I'll certainly be able to make this happen now that I'll be able to set waypoints and have a method (probably a glyph) to line up on for the charger.  My vacuum can do it, my robots should be able to as well.

2) Fully autonomous navigation.  I want the robot to randomly wander around the house looking for cat toys or motion.  Pick up the cat toys, and react to the motion.  This is the start of that.  I should be able to emulate aimless wandering by setting up waypoint to waypoint paths and vary them.  That is why I have been involved in he Lidar discussion because I want good object avoidance.  Then I would be able to request that it come to a room by just going to that waypoint.  Again, the navigation part is all stuff my vacuum can do, but it is purpose build for this, so I understand why it is taking some work to get ARC to that point with everything else it does too.  The recognition of motion or people is also easy in ARC.  The recognition of various cat toys and picking them up without me controlling the arm is a challenge, but @Nink is working on a similar project and I expect to learn from his experience.  This is also the least important part, although if I can  get it working perfectly, it would make my robot vacuum more useful because I would not need to go through the house picking up the toys before letting the vacuum do its work.

3) Follow me, at my heels (like a well trained dog). This will require a different set of skills, although object avoidance will still be part of it.  The most promising thing I have looked into so far was an Infrared transceiver kit that Sparkfun sells, where I would wear the transmitter and the robot would try to follow it. It requires soldering on the board, which is a skill I have not mastered, and it is known to not work well outside, so I would need a backup, but I already have the project where I can control my robot from my Android WearOS smartwatch, so that would be OK to help it find me if it gets lost.

Alan
#8  
Roli (now named Explorer) is ready to start learning to navigate.   I installed but have not set up the ping sensor on the front yet, and I am working in the basement, so I don't need my IR cliff sensor yet.  Just going to start with the Realsense and add the ping to the project later when I get the basics down.  Unfortunately, I have work in the morning, so bedtime now.

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Portugal
#9  
Nice setup. What are the specs of that tablet? The reason why i am asking is because i use a intel compute stick and due to its poor performance navigation is most of the time way off the original path points. If i use my desktop pc with a long USB3 cable, navigation is smooth and spot on. One other thing is that the map created with the ping sensor doesn't really do anything yet, you can drive though the map walls. I hope that the Rock Pi X has enough juice to handle ARC or perhaps i get me a laptop.
Stay safe!
#10  
@proteusy
It is an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 @1.44 ghz with 4gb of RAM.  64gb of main storage and can take a microSD card if I need secondary storage.  So pretty much the same as a lot of Chinese made micro PC's.   If it doesn't perform well enough, I do have a more powerful micro-PC, but it doesn't have its own screen or battery, and won't fit as nicely in ROLI, but I will probably use it or one like it in the final build (using it on my desktop in the workshop for now and may not want to give that up).

Alan
Portugal
#12  
@PTP
Obrigado, um abraço!
#13  
@PTP.  The tablet was really cheap ($90), and is way faster than my Acer W8.  It is new old stock of a no-name Chinese vendor.  Shipped with Windows 8.1 but the eBay vendor updated it to Windows 10.  Unfortunately, they had great difficulty getting drivers for US Windows and the manufacturer didn't help.  They were able to get everything except the power system.  It never shows that the battery is full, usually says that it is at 7%, but it lasts for about 9 hours while saying that it is at 7%, so it is usable, I just never know when it is going to die.  Runs on 5V though, so will be really easy to provide external power in the permanent build if I decide to stick with it.

Alan
#14  
So, last night I forgot to turn Roli off after I was finished working with the Lidar for the night.  It was totally idle, but still connected to the network.  I remembered this morning 12 hours later and it was still connected to the network, so had not hit critical low state yet:)

Alan
PRO
Synthiam
#15  
Geez that's a long time! Pretty great efficiency on your setup
#16   — Edited
A few updates.  The tablet worked OK with the Realsense, but only had 1 USB 3 port, and the Lidar, even plugged into the USB 3 port was not able to be set at the optimum data speed, and as I mentioned before, it had some issues with battery management.  It turns out that running Realsense and Lidar the batter only lasted about 30 minutes.  I have a powered USB hub solution for my eventual build, but it would not fit in Roli, so I picket up a high capacity power bank with adjustable output, and out a small (not quite SBC) computer on board runing headless instead.

I'll be posting some questions/suggestions in the Navigator thread tomorrow with lessons learned having thr Lidar, and my be ordering thr Realsense distance sensor while they are still available.  I'll probably be putting thr Ping sensor back on the front too for better front object detection nearer to the floor, but this is the build for now. 

Please excuse the sloppy wiring.  This is just a temporary test setup, SO I didn't spend a lot of time on cable management. 



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PRO
USA
#17  
@Alan:

Quote:

ordering thr Realsense distance sensor while they are still available.
What you mean with that ? D435i ?  The D455 and D435i are the new models, source ?
#18  

Quote:

What you mean with that ? D435i ? The D455 and D435i are the new models, source ?
In another thread, DJ has been complaining that he is writing code to support a device that is already end of life.   I haven't researched myself.  I see they are for sale on the Intel web site directly.

Alan
PRO
Canada
#19  
Tip on battery Life....I was using the cheaper RC Lipo/Nimh chargers that are even supposed to balance Lipo batteries...They do not work right and in fact damage the life of Lipo batteries. Use the 70.00$ Imax B6 or B6 Mini the newest one. The best charger ever! I brought 6 Dead Lipo batteries back to full Life after sitting dead for 3 years,old chargers would never charge them saying error,no balance either. The Imax does every battery known to man and very accurately balances every Lipo cell ,also has volt meter,Ammeter, lets you discharge/charge in full cycle for Nimh batteries. For storing battery can set proper voltage. I even got 1 Lipo fully charged but did have 1 cell leaked a bit of gas,The Imax tells you that and while fully charged shows the 2 cell Lipo not balancing well But it still works as fully charged with a tiny amount of bloating(not recommended to keep using) Shows how good this Charger is.
PRO
Canada
#20  
Most good quality LIPo chargers will not charge a LiPo if it below a certain voltage.  This is because the charger has a safety feature that assumes the battery is suspect or faulty and may blow up.  You can get around this by providing a constant current, constant voltage charge and do one cell at a time at a low amperage (less than 1C) and keep an eye on it, making sure it is not getting hot.  Get each cell up over about 3v and it will happily ballance charge again.
PRO
Canada
#21  
1 trick I saw on YouTube, if you have a near dead Lipo and no charger will work, set the charger to trickle charge on the Nimh or Nickel battery setting. After it gets back in target voltage,switch to Lipo balance setting,then good as new if no battery swelling.
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