DexterO/S and GoPiGo stop for no apparent reason

GoPiGo OS, DexterOS and Bloxter
1

Greetings!

This topic merges several others:

  1. What batteries should I be using for the GoPiGo?
  2. My GoPiGo is doing [something unexpected]. What's Wrong?

There has been a discussion of batteries, 'bots and 'behaviors.

New information:

  1. I installed a complete set of Varta (supposedly German design that are supposedly 2700mAh), fully charged.
  2. I checked the voltage and it reads:
    a. Directly after charge - about 11.6 (or so).
    b. After all this testing - about 10.6 (or so).
  3. Current draw
    a. While booting up = average about 250 mA peeking at about 500mA during WiFi powerup.
    b. Static - sitting there doing nothing = 250 to 300ma.
    c. While operating = unknown. I do not have the tools to measure this.
    Voltages are all approximate as my meter was on a 10A range.

I could reproduce the problem by holding the 'bot in my hand and applying moderate friction to any one of the two wheels. Here I am talking about a light squeeze to the tire.

I created a program, (attached) that has an infinite loop that drives the 'bot in a square and then moves the servo back and forth as if it’s looking around. This version has a counter that counts the number of times through the loop.

Attachments:

  1. Copy of blox program for driving the 'bot in a loop.
  2. Video: about two minutes of the 'bot driving in a “square”
  3. Video taken about 30 seconds after the first video ended, showing the 'bot in its “stalled” condition.
  4. Zip file of logs taken this session.

In the stalled condition there are no lights indicating that anything has gone wrong.

Please examine and advise.

Jim “JR”

Correction:
The video files are large. I have uploaded the program file, both video files and the associated zip file of the logs to my MediaFire account which allows general access to this.

Viz.,
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/q749e9dondnv9/

2

Hi @jimrh,

I looked at all the logs you’ve posted and I didn’t see any anomaly. Maybe when it stalls you can go in a terminal (or Jupyter Notebook) and run the following code:

from easygopigo3 import EasyGoPiGo3
gpg = EasyGoPiGo3()
gpg.drive_cm(50)

Does it move if you do this?

Thank you!

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3

I have not had a chance to try that, but it has been my experience in the past that navigating away from a bloxter page causes the program on it to stop.

How do I run it as a pure python program where I have access to a terminal window?

Jim “JR”

4

When you do the whole drag and drop stuff in Bloxter, you’ll be able to see the Python code that’s being generated on the right sidebar. Copy paste that code and put it somewhere safe where you can, later on, copy it again.

Then you have 2 options. Both of these options involve JupyterLab:

  1. Either go to JupyterLab and simply upload the file from your laptop that contains the generated Python code for your Bloxter program.

  2. Or, create an empty file in JupyterLab, rename it as a .py file, open it and copy paste the generated Python code for your Bloxter program.

In the end, open up a terminal in JupyterLab, go to the appropriate directory where you saved it and run python myprogram.py and this should be it.

Let me know how it goes for you.

Thank you!

1 Like