mechlog/RCVehiclePy

Control steering and throttle of a R/C car via MQTT with Raspberry Pi 3B

RCVehiclePy

This is a Tool to Control steering and throttle of a R/C car via MQTT with Raspberry Pi 3B.

Table of Contents

• Prepare Hardware
• Getting Started
• Demo
• Acknowledgments
• License

Prepare Hardware

Setup Raspberry Pi 3B

• You can read my simple instruction at here.

Build a car

• Hardware is almost same as a Donkey Car.
• I bought below parts. The cost is about $130.
  • $84.95 Exceed Racing Desert Short Course Truck 1/16 Scale Ready to Run 2.4ghz (AA Blue)
  • $28.84 Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2-8 Megapixel,1080p
  • $9.99 SunFounder PCA9685 16 Channel 12 Bit PWM Servo Driver for Arduino and Raspberry Pi
  • $6.98 Maxmoral 2 Set (40P/Set) 10cm Female to Female Jumper Wire

Access point

We have several ways to connect Host PC and Raspberry Pi in outside.

• Setting Raspberry Pi as an access point. (documentation)
• Put a smart phone on a R/C car, and tethering both of them.
• Put a mobile wifi router on a R/C car.

Getting Started

Connect to Pi via SSH

After setup access points,

$ sudo ssh pi@raspberrypi.local

Setup momo

Momo is a powerfuil WebRTC Native Client. You can follow my instraction at here.

Clone Repository

$ cd ~/
$ git clone https://github.com/shirokunet/RCVehiclePy

Update pip3 (optional)

$ sudo apt-get remove python-pip python3-pip
$ wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
$ sudo python3 get-pip.py

Setup Prerequisites

• Python 3.5.x
• numpy 1.16.1
• PyYAML 3.12

$ cd ~/RCVehiclePy/
$ sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt
$ sudo apt-get install python3-numpy
$ sudo apt-get install python3-yaml

Check Pi's IP address

$ ifconfig
    wlan0: flags=4163 mtu 1500
    inet xx.xx.xx.xx netmask 255.255.255.0

Setup config file

Then chenge config file

$ cd ~/RCVehiclePy/
$ vi config.yml
pi_ip: 'xx.xx.xx.xx'

Lunch MQTT publisher on the Raspberry Pi

$ cd ~/RCVehiclePy/
$ python3 pi_main.py

Set environment on the host PC

Same as the step of the Raspberry Pi.

• Clone Repository
• Setup Prerequisites
• Setup config file

Lunch MQTT publisher on the host PC

$ cd ~/RCVehiclePy/
$ python3 pc_main.py

Send command to Pi from the host PC

Just push key "UP" or "DOWN" or "LEFT" or "RIGHT" on the terminal.

Stop Program

Type 'Ctrl' + 'c' in both terminals.

Demo

The latency is about 100~300msec. It can be controlled easily even if you watch only the camera streaming.

Acknowledgments

• Actuator layer is built upon autorope/donkeycar. Thank you!

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details