Program Robots Like a Boss
Have you ever wanted to control your Arduino board from a Raspberry Pi (or your computer), using only Python and not the Arduino language? Here comes pyFirmata, a Python library based on the Firmata protocol. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to setup pyFirmata and write complete programs using real hardware. You’ll need: An … Read more
So, you’re using – or want to use – ROS on a Raspberry Pi. That’s great! ROS + Raspberry Pi is such a powerful combination to create smart robots, with a somehow low cost, and very small electronic board embedded in the robot. Although there are many advantages, there are also some limitations that you … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to install Raspbian Desktop on a virtual machine, and more specifically on VirtualBox. As you may know, Raspbian – derived from Debian – is the official operating system (OS) for Raspberry Pi boards. But… Raspbian is not only working on Raspberry Pi boards. You can actually install it … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to write a complete ROS Service on your Raspberry Pi. You’ll see how to create both sides of the ROS Service: the client and the server. Also, to make it more interesting, we’ll use the Raspberry Pi GPIO header to actuate real hardware (using interrupts). Here is the … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a ROS Python Subscriber on your Raspberry Pi. This is the direct following of how to create a ROS Publisher on Raspberry Pi. Please check out this previous tutorial first, before you continue. In the first tutorial you have seen how to read the state of … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to write a ROS Python publisher on your Raspberry Pi. With the following code example you’ll learn how to publish a GPIO state with ROS. For that we’ll use a simple push button with a minimal hardware setup. You’ll see all the steps, from setting up the environment, … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll teach you how to use GPIO interrupts on your Raspberry Pi, thanks to the RPi.GPIO library. You’ll see: Why and when you need interrupts. How to use interrupts in your programs. 3 working examples to practice on different situations. This tutorial works on Raspberry Pi 4 (and earlier, 3B, 3B+), with … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to communicate between a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino board via Serial communication. First, I’ll quickly explain what is Serial communication. Then you’ll see how to setup your hardware and software, and we’ll dive into the Python code (Cpp for Arduino). A basic example at first, leading to … Read more
So, you’ve developed a nice ROS application, which can be launched with a single launch file: great! But… There is still a problem. Actually you have to manually launch this file with a command line tool (roslaunch), and you wonder how you could make your application automatically start when you boot your computer… Or your … Read more
Raspberry Pi hardware permissions can be quite tricky. So, you are using hardware functionalities with your Raspberry Pi 4 (or 3B, 3B+), and always getting errors such as “Permission denied”? This might be the case if you use I2C, SPI, UART, or simply the GPIOs on the Pi, with a user that isn’t root. In … Read more