Fixed the GPS and planning for V3
Date: 2021-01-08
Author: Andrew
Took a day off the project yesterday to get some space. The recogniser is not critical at the moment and focus on finding out why the GPS is bombing...
So it turns out that there was a problem with this line newdata = ser.readline().decode("utf-8") - where it couldn't covert to unicode. So commented out the .decode() section and it seemed to work again. However it kept repeating the $GPTXT line and the LED was flickering sligtly. A bit more messing about with the power cable suggested that it had frayed and that power was getting through intermittently to the GPS unit. A bit more wiggling and the power came on strong. Then the messages started working as expected - $GPGSA; GPGLL and so on appeared without $GPSTXT - which would suggest the GPS was constantly rebooting - or perhaps sending some character that was causing the serial decoder to bomb... So it's the classic situaiton - FIRST CHECK THE CABLES! So many times dodgy cables have been the last thing I checked :)
Despite trying to use the old cable as soon as I try to move it the GPS light was flickering again. Replaced cable as and now it seems to be AOK again. GPS up and running for final field test of V2 in next few days!
In evening met up with Rohan who has expressed interest in the project and lives near by. Planned out v3 - major changes
going to occur.
Brief summary:
- Add a web interface so we can see what is going on when the robot is running
- Replace all the physical switches/wires with software switches driven through the web interface
- Add drive for first time by converting and old radio controlled (RC) car
- Power the Pi off the RC car battery
- New housing designs to work with the RC car
- Replace the standard Pi camera with a the Noir camera
- Create a board in Trello and start a simple blog
Need to wrap up V2 first before getting distracted by V3!