Blog about working with Create

[Rud]

I have an iRobot Create. I first worked with a Command Module to control it but am now switching to a Fit PC Slim. I started writing about this in my blog at http://mysticlakesoftware.blogspot.com/.

I won't go into much here because I already explained, or will in the next day or so, a lot of the background for the project.

[Dave]

Hi Rud,

I've done something similar with a Create, except that instead of using a Fit PC I used a Gumstix with Wifi.

The reasons for the Wifi on the Slim is to download software and allow monitoring from the desktop or laptop, especially in the field.

To do this I installed Player on the Gumstix which had an interface to the Create so it didn't require using the OI directly, instead Player could receive commands instructing it to go forward, or read the bump sensors and so forth. Player was nice because you could either write programs that communicated to it directly or you could connect it over a network to PyroBot which provided a really nice GUI interface to controlling the robot, recording sensor data or writing a bit of AI (Pyro had a really nice neural network library for Python which I still use on its own from time to time). It was a University project so it was intended to give the students a nice environment to test abstract concepts which they could then transfer directly to a real robot over the wireless without having to worry about the technical details of doing so. If you want I still have the step-by-step guide I wrote to cross-compile Player and connect it to PyroBot, but I don't know how useful that would be to you if you're planning to implement your own control solution.

Please keep up the blog and the updates as I'm very interested in what you're doing. Good luck!

[Rud]

Dave,

I think I found Player once before but didn't pursue it because it doesn't run on Windows. In my career I don't know how many OSes I've worked on - and even written some small kernels. But for the life of me I cannot get my head around Linux so I avoid it. I try it every coupld years just because I know I shoud but the results are the same. At least with the Android cell phone I finally got into Java enough to be conversant with it. Java was another situation where I fully understood it after some experimentation and a quick course at work but could never really get into it. So I stuck with C++.

Glad you like the blog. I will be updating it if for no other purpose than to document things for myself.

[Dave]

I think I found Player once before but didn't pursue it because it doesn't run on Windows. In my career I don't know how many OSes I've worked on - and even written some small kernels. But for the life of me I cannot get my head around Linux so I avoid it.

Fair enough. There are instructions about compiling it using VisualStudio on the player/stage Wiki but it looks a bit fiddly still.

[Rud]

Grandson was over last weekend so I had to get something working on the Create. Just wrote a short blog entry on it. An excerpt:

Since this project will be using a web camera for vision I used some velcro to plunk the camera onto the Create just behind the IR sensor. The velcro raised it enough to see over the top of the sensor. I brought up RoboRealm and setup its built-in web page viewer. This lets you see the camera's images. I pointed the laptop at the web pages to display what the Create was seeing.

That was good for about 20 minutes and we got called for lunch and told to put the robot away. Awwww!!!  


Now to get ready for the next visit...