Using Johnny-five to build Raspberry Pi Robots

1. Building high performance
Raspberry Pi robots
@RiaanCornelius

2. Riaan Cornelius
• 10 Years of dev experience
• Mostly Java and Android
• I work for Entelect
• I try to do cool stuff in my free
time

3. How many people here are
interested in building robots?

4. Why haven’t you?
• It’s too hard
• I don’t know where to start
• It costs too much
• I don’t have time

5. You know Javascript
Node + Robotics = Nodebots
You already have most of the skills

6. Lets build a robot

7. What is a robot?
A robot is a mechanical or virtual artificial agent, usually an electro-mechanical
machine that is guided by a computer program or electronic circuitry. Robots can
be autonomous or semi-autonomous and range from humanoids such
as Honda's Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility (ASIMO) and TOSY's TOSY Ping Pong
Playing Robot (TOPIO) to industrial robots, collectively programmed swarm robots, and
even microscopic nano robots.
- Wikipedia

12. LetsMakeRobots.com
Inspiration
Tutorials
Helpful community

13. What do you need
Hardware
Electronics
Software
Patience

14. Hardware
Chassis with wheels and space to mount
stuff.

15. Electronics
Raspberry Pi B+
Why?
• Inexpensive
• Lots of GPIO
• More computing power than you need
• Easy to add a camera for computer vision
or video streaming

16. Electronics
Motor driver
Sensors

17. Electronics
Sparkfun Pi B+ Wedge
Breadboard jumper wire
Breadboard

18. What does this cost?
Chassis (With motors, wheels, chassis
and battery box)
R249.95
Raspberry Pi B+ R504.67
SparkFun Pi Wedge B+ R132.95
Breadboard Jumper Wire (65PCs Pack) R43.78
Motor driver R129.95
Distance sensor R39.95
Breadboard R64.09
Total: R1165.34

19. Step 1
Assemble the hardware

20. Step 2
Wire everything up

21. Step 3 – Program it
The part I imagine you are more interested in

22. What are we going to use?
Client
• Johnny-five
• JS Robotics library
Hardware
• Raspio-io
• Talks to the Raspberry Pi
Component specific libraries
• R-pi-usonic

23. Installing
1. Set up the Pi (Install raspbian, set up SSH, wifi, etc)
2. Install node.js
3. Install Johnny-five (npm install johnny-five)
4. Setup a board (npm install raspi-io)
5. That’s it

24. Simulation

25. Initialising Johnny-Five

26. Making it move

27. Bonus – Controlling it

28. Adding sensors

29. Logic

30. What next
• Improve the algorithm
• Add more sensors
• Give it a goal
• Give it personality
• Make the hardware better (Better chassis, stronger motors, etc)

31. Riaan Cornelius
@RiaanCornelius
http://riaancornelius.com
riaan.cornelius@entelect.co.za
https://github.com/riaancornelius/nodebot_steve

32. What will you build?

33. References
• Controlling 2 motors with the TB6612FNG + Arduino
• Running Johnny-Five on Raspberry Pi
• Johnny five website - Lots of examples
• Lets make robots – Awesome robot building community
Online retailers I use:
• www.netram.co.za
• www.microrobotics.co.za
• www.hobbytronics.co.za
• www.riecktron.co.za