Built with a Rasperry Pi Zero W, the rover is controlled by a laptop over wifi. It features a very-near-real-time camera feed, and a number of sensors allow the rover to drive 100% autonomously.

The build included some interesting design challenges notably:

• The main software build and testing was done on a full sized RPi2 as the RPi Zero was too slow to compile the software & dependencies used.
• Software-based PWM signals provided noise and made steering unstable.
• High network latency (home wifi) caused the camera feed to be out by seconds resulting in epic crashes.
• An approach was needed to create an effective ‘bus’ for all the sensor and logic connections to/from the RPi GPIO rail as wiring became overly complicated.

Below: the RPi Rover with the development RPi2 in the background. I opted for easy prototyping using technic lego. The Rover has 2 power supplies, one for the servo and main motor and another powering the RPi Zero and bus.

Below: testing with the camera feed (the beginning of the latency problem!). I used PyGame to develop the control system as it allowed me to map the same keys I used to use for gaming on my acorn electron!

Have any questions about my build? Do you want to know more about how I created the near-real time camera feed or how I solved the problems stated above? Why not contact me I’d be happy to tell you more.