Maker Jarmil Halamíček is engaged on an open supply, highly-hackable tracked robotic platform — that includes a Raspberry Pi Zero WH single-board laptop as its “mind”: the Tortuguita.
“Tortuguita is [an] open supply boilerplate rover platform for anybody who need to construct one thing cool and transferring, with out losing time by twiddling with motors, drawing PCBs et cetera,” Halamíček explains of the machine, whose identify means “Little Turtle.” “It’s set of effectively designed separate modules, which might be simply unmounted, lower right down to items, modified, hacked, and mounted again.”
The cat’s meow: Tortuguita is an open-hardware tank-track rover platform pushed by a Raspberry Pi. (📷: Tortuguita)
The center of the robotic is a Raspberry Pi Zero WH single-board laptop operating Raspberry Pi OS, related to a Raspberry Pi Digital camera Module v2. A pair of 12V 25GA-370 geared motors drive independently-controllable tank-like tracks with 4 doubled street wheels, loafer, and sprocket, with energy offered by a trio of 18650 lithium-ion cells.
Halamíček has already accomplished preliminary {hardware} design, utilizing a combination of 3D-printable elements and low-cost plywood to type the robotic’s physique, and on the time of writing had been engaged on sprucing the software program stack — a combination of Python, Flask, React, and Bootstrap, with an utility programming interface (API) to make it straightforward to write down your individual applications to drive the turtle.
A “PWM connector bay” on the high permits for straightforward growth with grippers, “NERF turrets,” and extra. (📷: Tortuguita)
“The management software program works effective,” Halamíček writes of the challenge’s newest progress, “however the fronted UX [User Experience] was made with a typical hacker’s perspective (it is ugly, but it surely works) and in addition just for a comparatively large display on my iPad. I am glad I decided to construct a easy however highly effective sufficient UX stack from React, Bootstrap and Font Superior (as an alternative of plain JS [JavaScript] and CSS [Cascading Style Sheets]). The whole time to do all [these] tweaks was slightly bit longer than to write down this log, however nonetheless a bit of cake.”
Extra data on Tortuguita is on the market on the official web site, whereas kits can be found to order from the shop at $199 for simply the electronics, $299 for all the things besides the 3D-printable elements, and $399 for a whole package. Those that need to make their very own can discover the {hardware} and software program in separate GitLab repositories, underneath the Artistic Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and GNU Normal Public License 3 licenses respectively. Venture updates, in the meantime, are being revealed on Hackaday.io.