Installation Issues

Hi Phil,

ModMyPi should be in contact with you soon to arrange replacement parts to be sent to you.

If you have any problems or queries please let us know :)

The LED on the ThunderBorg should turn on when the board has both 5V and 3.3V power supplied. The 5V is generated on the ThunderBorg from the battery supply and the 3.3V is generated on the Raspberry Pi from the 5V power.

This means that the ThunderBorg needs power from the batteries and a connection to the Raspberry Pi at the same time to before it will power up.

As the LED is not turning on the most likely cause is that either the 5V or 3.3V power is not available. The most likely culprits are:

1. The ThunderBorg needs to have the batteries connected to generate the 5V power
2. The batteries might need charging, they need to be providing at least 7V, ideally 7.2V or more
3. Check the wires for V+ and GND. It is possible to locate the wire underneath the clamp, so double check it has grabbed both wires by the metal conductor.
4. Check the two 3-pin cables are connected correctly (see diagram below). It is hard to tell from the photo if the connections are right on the robot
5. Check the 3-pin cables are okay and making a good connection.

Glad to hear your project is up and going again :)

We are happy to exchange the faulty ThunderBorg for you. If you can send us a message using our contact form with the address you would like the replacement sent to.

If you can also send back the faulty ThunderBorg to us so that we can investigate what is wrong with it. The address to return the board to is:

Freeburn Robotics Ltd
15 Earith Business Park,
Meadow Drove,
Earith,
PE28 3QF,
UK

Thanks, we will get the replacement shipped out to you as soon as possible :)

It looks like all of the download links on the main site are not working today :(

As a temporary measure you can download the software from the forum site instead:
http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip
http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/monsterborg/examples.zip

These are the install commands using the forum links:

mkdir ~/thunderborg
cd ~/thunderborg
wget http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip
unzip examples.zip
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh
mkdir ~/monsterborg
cd ~/monsterborg
wget http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/monsterborg/examples.zip
unzip examples.zip
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

Hi Milan,

It is very likely the LEDs are faulty on that board.

Please send the faulty board back to us at this address:

Freeburn Robotics Limited
Unit 15, Earith Business Park
Meadow Drove
Earith
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire
PE28 3QF
United Kingdom

If you can then send us a message using our contact form so we can get a replacement sent to you. Select "Direct contact" as the category and include your order number and a link to this post :)

Hi Milan,

We did find a fault with one of the LEDs on the board, preventing both of them from working.

We have sent you a replacement board. It should be with you in 5-7 working days.

The libcv-dev package is not required anymore, it can be removed from the install.

The command should be:

sudo apt-get -y install libopencv-dev python-opencv

I will get the instructions updated once I am back in the office :)

Good news, we have an improved version of the script that should get things sorted.

On GitHub we have a library to make setting up controllers easier called Gamepad: https://github.com/piborg/Gamepad
Included is the monsterJoy.py example which should function the same as the script you are trying to use, except it is setup for a PS4 controller already.

The control layout is set in the Settings for the gamepad section towards the top of the script, including the controller type.

Installation is really simple:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/piborg/Gamepad

The wiki page has a quick explanation of how everything works if you want to make any changes or improvements of your own :)

It sounds like the examples.zip file did not download correctly.

First remove any of the downloads for ThunderBorg / MonsterBorg like this:

cd ~
rm -r thunderborg
rm -r monsterborg

Now run through the installation steps, stopping before the unzip:

mkdir ~/thunderborg
cd ~/thunderborg
wget http://www.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip

If everything is working you should see something similar to the following:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $cd ~
pi@raspberrypi:~ $rm -r thunderborg
pi@raspberrypi:~ $rm -r monsterborg
pi@raspberrypi:~ $mkdir ~/thunderborg
pi@raspberrypi:~ $cd ~/thunderborg
pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $wget http://www.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip
--2021-10-01 15:16:54--  http://www.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip
Resolving www.piborg.org (www.piborg.org)... 93.93.131.3
Connecting to www.piborg.org (www.piborg.org)|93.93.131.3|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://www.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip [following]
--2021-10-01 15:16:55--  https://www.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip
Connecting to www.piborg.org (www.piborg.org)|93.93.131.3|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 26713 (26K) [application/zip]
Saving to: âexamples.zipâ

examples.zip              100%[===================================>]  26.09K  --.-KB/s    in 0.02s

2021-10-01 15:16:55 (1.27 MB/s) - âexamples.zipâ saved [26713/26713]

pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $

If this worked and you got [26713/26713] at the end everything downloaded fine and you should be able to carry on, if not then the download failed.

If it failed to download then the output from the wget command will help us figure out what the problem is :)

If it downloaded successfully then this is the sort of output you should get continuing on:

pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $unzip examples.zip
Archive:  examples.zip
  inflating: install.sh
  inflating: piborg.ico
 extracting: runTbJoy.sh
  inflating: tbExternalLedWave.py
  inflating: tbGui.py
  inflating: tbJoystick.py
  inflating: tbLedGui.py
  inflating: tbLedWave.py
  inflating: tbReadBattery.py
  inflating: tbSequence.py
  inflating: tbSetBatteryLimits.py
  inflating: tbStepper.py
  inflating: tbStepperSeq.py
  inflating: ThunderBorg.py
pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $chmod +x install.sh
pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $./install.sh
=== Installing prerequisites ===
Get:1 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster InRelease [32.6 kB]
Get:2 http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease [15.0 kB]
Get:3 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable InRelease [10.4 kB]
Get:4 http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster/main armhf Packages [393 kB]
Get:5 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main amd64 Packages [48.2 kB]
Get:6 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main armhf Packages [49.0 kB]
Get:7 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main arm64 Packages [49.1 kB]
Reading package lists... Done
E: Repository 'http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease' changed its 'Suite' value from 'stable' to 'oldstable'
N: This must be accepted explicitly before updates for this repository can be applied. See apt-secure(8) manpage for details.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
i2c-tools is already the newest version (4.1-1).
i2c-tools set to manually installed.
python-gtk2 is already the newest version (2.24.0-5.1).
python-gtk2 set to manually installed.
python-smbus is already the newest version (4.1-1).
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  fonts-elusive-icons fonts-font-awesome geoclue-2.0 iio-sensor-proxy libmbim-glib4 libmbim-proxy
  libmm-glib0 libqmi-glib5 libqmi-proxy libqt5multimedia5 libqt5multimediawidgets5 libqt5opengl5
  libqt5positioning5 libqt5qml5 libqt5quick5 libqt5sensors5 libqt5webchannel5 libqt5webkit5
  modemmanager python-qtawesome-common python3-pyqt5.qtmultimedia python3-pyqt5.qtopengl
  python3-pyqt5.qtsvg python3-pyqt5.qtwebkit python3-qtpy
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 172 not upgraded.
sudo: easy_install: command not found
=== Removing I2C devices from the blacklisting ===
=== Adding I2C devices to auto-load at boot time ===
=== Adding user "pi" to the I2C permissions list ===
The user `pi' is already a member of `i2c'.
=== Make scripts executable ===
=== Create a desktop shortcut for the GUI example ===
=== Create a desktop shortcut for the LED GUI example ===
=== Finished ===

Your Raspberry Pi should now be setup for running ThunderBorg
Please restart your Raspberry Pi to ensure the I2C driver is running
pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $

If you are installing MonsterBorg code as well then you should get a similar result after downloading examples.zip, but the size will be [15394/15394] instead.

pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $mkdir ~/monsterborg
pi@raspberrypi:~/thunderborg $cd ~/monsterborg
pi@raspberrypi:~/monsterborg $wget http://www.piborg.org/downloads/monsterborg/examples.zip
--2021-10-01 15:25:15--  http://www.piborg.org/downloads/monsterborg/examples.zip
Resolving www.piborg.org (www.piborg.org)... 93.93.131.3
Connecting to www.piborg.org (www.piborg.org)|93.93.131.3|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://www.piborg.org/downloads/monsterborg/examples.zip [following]
--2021-10-01 15:25:15--  https://www.piborg.org/downloads/monsterborg/examples.zip
Connecting to www.piborg.org (www.piborg.org)|93.93.131.3|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 15394 (15K) [application/zip]
Saving to: âexamples.zipâ

examples.zip              100%[===================================>]  15.03K  --.-KB/s    in 0.02s

2021-10-01 15:25:15 (906 KB/s) - âexamples.zipâ saved [15394/15394]

pi@raspberrypi:~/monsterborg $

This should then unzip as follows:

pi@raspberrypi:~/monsterborg $unzip examples.zip
Archive:  examples.zip
  inflating: install.sh
  inflating: monsterJoy.py
  inflating: monsterSequence.py
  inflating: monsterWeb.py
 extracting: runMonsterJoy.sh
  inflating: ThunderBorg.py
pi@raspberrypi:~/monsterborg $chmod +x install.sh
pi@raspberrypi:~/monsterborg $./install.sh
*** MAKE SURE THAT THE THUNDERBORG SOFTWARE IS INSTALLED ***
=== Make scripts executable ===
=== Finished ===

Your Raspberry Pi now has the MonsterBorg scripts available
They can be found at /home/pi/monsterborg
pi@raspberrypi:~/monsterborg $

Yes, it is a problem with the version of Python :(

The print syntax error is because the code was originally written to run with Python 2, it is not compatible with python 3.

Usually the python command is linked to Python 2 on the Raspberry Pi, but it seems to be linked to Python 3 instead on your system.

You should be able to run the script with Python 2 like this:

sudo python2 ./monsterWeb.py

I just tried the same steps here and the download worked fine. It might be worth trying again in case there was a temporary problem with our website.

We have seen this kind of problem when people have tried to download using a corporate network and the firewall blocks the download. The normal solution would be to try the download from another network.

You can try to skip the certificate check, but if the download is being blocked then it will probably not download the file correctly:

wget --no-check-certificate http://www.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/examples.zip

The good news is that the problem is simple and easily fixed :)

The trouble is actually with the line above:

/home/pi/monsterborg/runMonsterJoy.sh

What this will do is run the joystick code and wait until it finishes. Since the joystick code keeps running it means the startup script gets "stuck" here waiting and never runs any more lines.

The solution is to tell the script to run the code in the background and carry on without waiting for it to finish. This is done by adding an & to the end of the line:

/home/pi/monsterborg/runMonsterJoy.sh &

This is why the new line you added ends with an & as well.

Now it should start the joystick code running, then carry on and start the web UI running :)

You are correct, these examples were written for Python 2 as it was the default installed version of Python on the Raspberry Pi back when the MonsterBorg was released.

We do have a Python 3 version of monsterWeb.py, you can download it here: http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/monsterBorg/monsterWeb3.py.txt

Alternatively download directly to your Pi using:

cd ~/monsterborg
wget -O monsterWeb3.py http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/monsterBorg/monsterWeb3.py.txt

You will also need the Python 3 version of the main ThunderBorg library to run the script, you can download it here: http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/ThunderBorg3.py.txt

Alternatively download directly to your Pi using:

cd ~/monsterborg
wget -O ThunderBorg3.py http://forum.piborg.org/downloads/thunderborg/ThunderBorg3.py.txt

Since i2cdetect cannot see the ThunderBorg, the most likely explanation is that the I2C signals are not getting to the board properly.

Usually this is because the wire connecting the SDA and/or SCL line is messing up the signal so that the board cannot receive it correctly. Unlike the power connections, they are somewhat sensitive to poor contact.

I think we started putting a spare 3-pin cable in the kit because this is not an uncommon issue, so the first thing to try would be to swap the cable connecting SDA and SCL for the spare and see if things improve.

Alternatively if you have not already I would suggest swapping the two 3-pin cables over and see if you get a better connection, i.e. the 3-pin connecting 5V & GND at both ends now would connect 3V3, SDA & SCL at both ends.

If that was no help and you have over cables that can connect GPIO pins try them instead on the 3V3, SDA & SCL pins. Ideally shorter cables are better, but longer ones might be worth a try if that is all you have.

If none of those fixed things then we can send you out a couple of replacement cables to get things working :)