02-11-2018, 03:00 PM
I'm not clear about what's going on either. I was getting into robotics in 2015 pretty seriously. I bought tons of stuff at that time. I think I currently have over a dozen Arduino UNO boards. They were like $6 a piece so I bought a bunch just to play with at that price. 8)
I'm glad I did too because I can't find them that cheap anymore. Anyway I'm just now getting back into it. I just happened to remember that these boards had to have a special driver for some reason. It took me a while to find the information again, but fortunately I was able to find it from Amazon where the product information was still there with the link to the driver files.
Anyway, it's great to get these board back up and running. They are all coming back to "life" now. And I'm re-organizing all my code sketches trying to get back into it.
I also have four Mega boards, they too use these special CH340 serial drivers too. Not sure why. But I got them back up and running too.
I was also working with Raspberry Pi's back then too. I have one B+ and four A+ cards. I use the B+ to set things up initially and then switch over to the lower power A+ for the actual projects. The A+ has a single USB port which I use a WiFi dongle on so I can communicate with my robot using my Notebook computer. The Raspberry Pi has most of the programs, but I use the Notebook to tell it what to do, and get information back about how well the task is going.
I'm getting back into that too, and it's going to be yet another "learning curve" just to get back to where I was. I haven't gotten the Raspberry Pi out yet. I'm just now working on catching back up to where I was with the Arduino boards.
My original plan was to use the Raspberry Pi as the "Main Brain" of the robot, and have a few Arduino boards on the robot too for specialized task. The Raspberry Pi would then instruct the Arduino boards what to do and then be freed up to monitor other things.
It's a pretty nice scheme. Too bad I had gotten out of it. Life sometimes interferes with the fun projects we try to do. ;D
I'm just glad to get these boards back up and running. I was afraid that I would have forgotten how to program them. But fortunately once I looked at the sketches everything made perfect sense. So that's a good sign. I was afraid it might all look like Greek by now.
I hope I can catch back up on where I was with the Raspberry Pi just as easily. I had it connected via Remote Desktop to my Notebook and I was starting to learn Python since that's what people seem to like to program in on the Raspberry Pi. It will be a while before I get back into that. I have a bit more to catch up on with the Arduino projects first.
Right now I'm mainly trying to organize all my old sketches and find the best versions of each project. Once I get things weeded down to just the good stuff, I'll move on to seeing if I can catch back up on the Raspberry Pi. I'll need to get re-organized with that stuff too.
Fortunately I kept pretty good notes, and left a lot of detailed comments in my code. So that helps a LOT.
I'm glad I did too because I can't find them that cheap anymore. Anyway I'm just now getting back into it. I just happened to remember that these boards had to have a special driver for some reason. It took me a while to find the information again, but fortunately I was able to find it from Amazon where the product information was still there with the link to the driver files.
Anyway, it's great to get these board back up and running. They are all coming back to "life" now. And I'm re-organizing all my code sketches trying to get back into it.
I also have four Mega boards, they too use these special CH340 serial drivers too. Not sure why. But I got them back up and running too.
I was also working with Raspberry Pi's back then too. I have one B+ and four A+ cards. I use the B+ to set things up initially and then switch over to the lower power A+ for the actual projects. The A+ has a single USB port which I use a WiFi dongle on so I can communicate with my robot using my Notebook computer. The Raspberry Pi has most of the programs, but I use the Notebook to tell it what to do, and get information back about how well the task is going.
I'm getting back into that too, and it's going to be yet another "learning curve" just to get back to where I was. I haven't gotten the Raspberry Pi out yet. I'm just now working on catching back up to where I was with the Arduino boards.
My original plan was to use the Raspberry Pi as the "Main Brain" of the robot, and have a few Arduino boards on the robot too for specialized task. The Raspberry Pi would then instruct the Arduino boards what to do and then be freed up to monitor other things.
It's a pretty nice scheme. Too bad I had gotten out of it. Life sometimes interferes with the fun projects we try to do. ;D
I'm just glad to get these boards back up and running. I was afraid that I would have forgotten how to program them. But fortunately once I looked at the sketches everything made perfect sense. So that's a good sign. I was afraid it might all look like Greek by now.
I hope I can catch back up on where I was with the Raspberry Pi just as easily. I had it connected via Remote Desktop to my Notebook and I was starting to learn Python since that's what people seem to like to program in on the Raspberry Pi. It will be a while before I get back into that. I have a bit more to catch up on with the Arduino projects first.
Right now I'm mainly trying to organize all my old sketches and find the best versions of each project. Once I get things weeded down to just the good stuff, I'll move on to seeing if I can catch back up on the Raspberry Pi. I'll need to get re-organized with that stuff too.
Fortunately I kept pretty good notes, and left a lot of detailed comments in my code. So that helps a LOT.