We’ve been messing around with my BrickPi since it arrived a few weeks ago and seem to have finally come up with a robust configuration that handles the power demands of the Raspberry Pi, wifi dongle and BrickPi.
You can see a movie of it in action or read more on my tumblr.
The main obstacle seemed to be the power requirements. The addition of a separate power bank (from RS) has made a big difference.
Hey topshed, this is really awesome! Even more awesome, you used Scratch! What a great looking robot!
Do you mind if we show this off on our next post about user-created robots?
Another question for you! How did you mount the Raspberry Pi camera? It looks like you found a way to get it on your LEGO device pretty smoothly!
Happy for you to use in your posts.
The camera is mounted using a mount from Pimoroni. This fits nicely with lego: it has a hole in the plate that is perpendicular to the camera itself, so I threaded a lego axle through this to hold it in securely.
Topshed, thanks for posting the tip about power.
I have had my BrickPi for a few months now and been playing with it off and on only restricted by my freetime at the moment.
Following the great SimpleBot project (I had no parts so I got all from BrickExchange including the Mindstorm motors as well as Lego for parts they do still sell.)
My greatest problem was running the bot without wired power on battery only. I tried 6x AA and 8x AA batteries. Disposable alkalines seemed better than my rechargeables but the bot only ran for 5 minutes before behaving erratically and I think rebooting itself.
I hadn’t thought of a powerbank and so got one that is 4000MaH which should give it enough power as well as the 8x AAs.
The thing that is lacking in the instructions is that it needs some more detail around power I think. From memory it suggests that 6 or 8 cells of AA batteries is all that is required. Until I read this post I hadn’t considered running the Pi under more power in addition to the cells for the BrickPi.
So a big thanks goes to you Topshed for posting here and also linking to your great blog post.
I am all set to play with BrickPi over Xmas and create automons.