⚠️ instructions below are provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. See license for more info.

Tranode

WiFi remote-controlled car with a USB webcam built on Raspberry Pi and L293D chip for motor control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV2_LIXbDQA

Usage

Turn on the power, wait 50 seconds for the device to boot and start the web server
Connect to tranode WiFi, open your RPi IP address in the web browser e.g. http://10.42.0.1/
Drive around delivering drinks 🧉🍺🍼🏺🍾
When done, press Off button in the UI
After 20 seconds, turn off the power

Safety

Using a powerbank instead of batteries with a step-down converter would improve the safety of this project. Power banks support charging and have short-circuit / under-voltage protection but tend to limit the current which can be a problem since this project way exceeds the standard USB 500mA limit.

Another safety feature would be some physical protection of the ON switch preventing accidental power-ons.

Hardware

Building steps

Install latest Raspbian on SD card, boot and create a user tranode with password tranode
Use this guide to make your Raspberry Pi broadcast a tranode WiFi network
Install NodeJS on your Raspberry
Connect USB webcam

Install mjpg-streamer

sudo apt-get install xz-utils gcc g++ cmake libjpeg9-dev
git clone https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer.git
cd mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental
make
sudo make install
sudo bash -c "echo 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/tranode/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental' >> /etc/profile"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/tranode/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental

Install tranode server

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/kachurovskiy/tranode.git
cd tranode
npm install
sudo npm install -g pm2
sudo pm2 start tranode.js
sudo pm2 save

Debug

See sudo pm2 log and sudo cat /var/log/syslog for signs of potential errors.