Rebuilt Caster mounting bracket

I rebuilt the caster mounting bracket for the new frame mounting.  Its much more sturdy now for sure.  I will remove the hinge pin on the lids maybe to make access easier.  With this new frame arrangement, I'm considering moving the controls on the lid up to another enclosure on the next level.  Ugg.  I have to do this anyways for the metal detector controls, so I guess i can move the others.  This will make the bottom strictly power, batteries, and motor drives.

On another note, it looks like the cheap Harbor Freight caster isn't going to work very well. I guess I'll look into using those pillow blocks I bought way back.  They might be better for the swivel.

I also noticed my video was lagging quite a bit lately.  Not sure if its the GPS daemon causing the issue or not.  I'm guessing its a file access bottleneck to the SD card.  Two ways to approach it if that is the case - use a separate non-video Pi for the GPS, or remove the onscreen video.

I also weighed the bot with the added framing.  It weighs in at 282 lbs...

Added Upper frame for detector controls

Whew!

I added the upper 80/20 frame, which will support the detector electronics.  I will hinge the upper treadplate, which allows me to open both access doors on the drive and power controls about 50%.  This will also give me the added support for the swivel which will now mount to both the upper and lower frame sections.  Having it on the bottom only, had too much flex.

Pulling the right corner to mount a strut

Left corner..

Finished right corner strut mounting

Upper and lower frame

Both frames with treadplate cover.

Added GPS to bot

I got the GPS positioning up and running!

I received the Adafruit GPS Hat I ordered, which is this https://www.adafruit.com/products/2324.

I also ordered the stackable header  https://www.adafruit.com/products/2223, so that I can plug the ribbon into the HAT board now, instead of the Pi.

I ordered the SMA to uFL adapter:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/851,

the external GPS antenna:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/960,

the coin cell battery:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/380,

the standoffs https://www.adafruit.com/products/2336

I soldered the stackable header, installed the board with no issues.  I installed the gpsd daemon that Adafruit detailed in the nice online guide, and I used the python code from Dan Mandle's blog here:
 http://www.danmandle.com/blog/getting-gpsd-to-work-with-python/.

In order to bring the data into Codesys, I wanted to pass the data values into the Codesys Pi's Modbus server, so I installed the pymodbus library from here:
 https://github.com/bashwork/pymodbus

Using the library's payload builder and client's write registers function, I was able to successfully get the data from the GPS into the Codesys.

This is the same method I will eventually use for the Phidget modules I will need as well eventually, since there is a ton of python code out there for that as well.  I could end up compiling and running it in C, but I like the simplicity of using the Python, and speed in this case isn't an issue.  We'll see what works out better later.

Here are some pictures...

Adafruit Hat GPS plugged into Pi

Screenshot of GPS Data

Voltage / Current sensing added

Last night and today, I added the voltage sensing circuit, and current sensing circuits.  Not happy about the current sensing, turns out my sensors are rated too high (600A) sensors, to get enough resolution sensing the low current of the bot.  Oh well, I have to price out some smaller ones.  I had these laying around and hoped I could use them.

I've also been looking at the frame.  I knew the swivel was more or less temporary, but I have a plan now.  I will go ahead and mount the 2nd part of the frame above the box height, and connect the two frames by 4 connecting beams.  I will attach the swivel bracket to a cross member attached to both frames.  This should double the strength and rigidity, and also double my mounting space on the rover.  I will need this room up top for the detector control enclosure and the other hardware.

Below are picts of the new wiring and sensors, and a new screenshot.

New voltage and current sensors

Latest screenshot without meters and more info

Added the Estop and power switch circuit

Hi folks!

I've added the Estop and Power On/Off circuit.  With this I can run the bot on the ground (hopefully).

Here are some new pictures of the mods.  Below are videos I posted also..

Estop and Power Contactors with Estop button and Power On/Off.

Rear view Left

Right side lid open

Rear View Right

cell phone browser GUI screen

Rover update

Hi folks,

I haven't updated in a while, so I thought I would post some of the latest pictures and info.

I have changed the rover setup somewhat from the original plan.  Originally, I was going to use an onboard generator, to power a 120V power circuit, since I had lots of 120V powered hardware.

I have modified that a bit.  I added two, 12V batteries in series for 24V.  I also added a 24V inverter to power the onboard electronics, along with a battery tender charger, that is designed to be left in the circuit all of the time.  This allows independant, "quiet" running off of batteries, and still retain the ability to charge off a generator for long term field use.

I have several power supplies running for 12V, 5V, and low power 24V (isolated from batteries), on the 120V power circuit.  Without much of a load, the power supplies only pull 32VA on the power circuit, or 0.28A.  The inverter can supply up to 600W so I should have plenty of room.

I am using a puresine type inverter, to give me the cleanest AC power I can get.  I had a modified sine wave type earlier, and one of my power supplies was wining about it, so I changed over to the true sine wave.  No more wining from the power supplies.

I also have the SoftPLC with the Codesys running on my base board installed.  I am driving the Sabertooth 2X25 motor drive board from 2 of the DAC outputs on the baseboard.  This seems to work really well.  The base board is running the Adafruit 10DOF IMU, which gives me pitch, roll, and yaw, with Heading.  I also have temp and barometric pressure with altitude from this as well.

I have a Pi camera embedded in the control GUI, to steer by, if needed.  I have also upgraded the Wifi Router to an uptodate TPLink AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit router.  This gives me plenty of range, and bandwidth for streaming video and control.

I still have to install my main power on/off circuit, and my ESTOP circuit before I can run on the ground.

Still to do is adding the ROS computer.  I had originally planned on the Zotac HTPC, but I will be changing over to an Intel NUC or equivalent, and run ROS from that.  The plan is to bring in ROS-specific sensors such as the Kinect, and run a Modbus server, to pass data from the SoftPLC based Pi.

I still have to build the detector array, as well as the Main Operator Console which I havent started on yet.  I could use a laptop for this, and run everything from the broswer GUI, but I really like actual hardware.  I had planned on using another Pi with the 7" touchscreen display, running another SoftPLC and Codesys - using the Pi hardware, and perhaps another base board for this.   However, I would use the laptop with Windows 10 and run another gui with a SQL database historian from it.  I can run a USB server on the ROS machine, and have access to Phidgets and other USB based hardware in the rover from the Windows machine.  This would allow me to use my Phidget GPS and other boards I bought.

I guess that's it, I'll post more later. :)

Below are some pictures of the various hardware, and a screenshot of  a basic rover motor control GUI.

Screenshot of Motor Control GUI

Right side view of Rover with lids open

Left control bay showing batteries, inverter, and charger.

Left bay again

SoftPLC running Codesys on the Pi and baseboard with Sabertooth 2x25 and Wifi router