Alright so today, I installed the boards on the chassis using screws. I had to drill the chassis and now it looks much better with everything mounted. While I am troubleshooting the motion of the robot I took off the camera and the distance sensor. The battery packs are currently, hot glued onto the chassis, until I figure out something better. I didn't have enough screws, so each board is mounted with only two in diagonal corners.
The super long motor cables are very annoying, but I don't want to cut them as I'm nervous about soldering them. Maybe I can zip tie them?
Currenltly I am working on motor control. I am using a raspberry pi and two L298n motor controllers.So far I am having trouble getting a consistent response and I suspect the GPIO pins on the pi. The creator of the Rpi.GPIO library mentioned that it is not suitable for real time applications, since python does some stuff in the background that messes up the timing.
As an option I am considering adding an Arduino to the project, to improve the robot's real time response. Eventually I want to be able for the robot to drive autonomously and it will be very difficult in that case to compensate for delays.
Also another thing that I have discovered is that pins 0-8 on the Raspberry pi start out as HIGH. Which is terrible, because it means if I am using them to control the robot, it will be spinning wheels while the program isn't running.
In the picture above I have an arduino nano clone inserted onto the bread board. I wonder if that will be enough to deal with the motor controller issue. If that doesn't work I can switch to an arduino uno I have lying around. But of course I need to think about how I am going to power it. They can be powered with a 9V battery, but I wonder if that will run out too fast.
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