MicroPython Forum (Archive)

Just though I would share another robot that I have been developing.

It is a worm robot and it produces locomotion by wiggling like a worm. The Worm robot's locomotion speed and steering can be controlled with any web browser.

I use my ESP32 Servo board that I designed with Lobo MicroPython to drive it.

see https://youtu.be/9fHB7VB73dg

Impressive!

Nice work OotB! It's quite hypnotic to watch.

Thanks guys

I have a few other ideas for cool robots.

The ESP32 Servo Board should go into production shortly for anyone that wants to buy 1.

At some stage when I get the physical robots sorted out I will make all design pubic and a tutorial on how to build them and put up my code open source.

I'm not sure if you have a need for it OotB but I've been working on a small ESP32-based board with an on-board Pololu H-Bridge for DC motor control. There is also a 12V-compatible regulator and LiPo charge circuit. (I'm helping my Dad build a trainset for my 5yo nephew where each train can be controlled over Wifi using MQTT messages for control.)

If you (or anyone else!) are interested I'll share more details...

Thanks Mattyt for the offer but I do have a board that I designed and built for a 2 dc motor turtle style robot. I used 2 x L9110 h-bridges because they use less pins and have the lowest forward voltage off all the h-bridges that I played with. I also put 2 x LS7366R encoder counter chips on it keep track of the resolution encoders I was using. I also added an adjustable buck converter so that the 2S and 3S lipo battery voltage could be adjusted down to the needed voltage for the motors. I also added a 2.4" ili9341 screen with touch as a user interface.

Believe it or not I built all this and used it a couple of times to start to develop some code then put it on the back burner meaning to finish it off but it is still just sitting there with the home made PCB oxidizing

Hi Folks,

I would be very interested in purchasing an ESP32 board for a small micropython robot. The addition of hardware and drivers for motor control, encoders, power distribution and a display would be a great place to start instead of having to scratch-build those parts.

Duane Gustavus

I am about to start a production run of the board in the video that drives the worm robot.

It is a servo board not a dc motor with encoders but I have been working on a board with h-bridge and encoder counters but it has been on hold while I get this board finished.

This board has ESP32 Wrover with psRAM, 1amp 3.3v regulator to drive all the ICs, a 10amp buck converter to power the servos, PCA9685 16 channel PWM generator to create the signals to drive the servos, 1.77" display, voltage diver to the ADC pin for battery monitoring, user interface buttons, SD card slot (connected to be able to be used in SPI, 1 line or 4 line mode) and builtin USB to serial converter fro plug and play programming.

The motor board that I have been working on will have a 3amp buck converter to drive the motors, 2 x LS7366R encoder counters, 2 x L9110 h-bridges, 2.4" screen with touch for user interface, USB to serial for plug and play and was possibility looking at adding a MCP23017 GPIO expanded because once you have added all the above then not many pins left for any other peripherals