Picoborg Reverse controlled by serial Term

Sorry about the slow reply.

Yes, you should be able to do this using a PicoBorg Reverse :)

First you will need to setup the board at the top of your script (change the power settings to match your robot).

# Import library functions we need
import PicoBorgRev

# Setup the PicoBorg Reverse
PBR = PicoBorgRev.PicoBorgRev()
PBR.Init()
PBR.SetCommsFailsafe(False)
PBR.ResetEpo()

# Power settings
voltageIn = 1.2 * 12  # Total battery voltage
voltageOut = 12.0     # Maximum motor voltage

# Setup the power limits
if voltageOut > voltageIn:
    maxPower = 1.0
else:
    maxPower = voltageOut / float(voltageIn)

I would also suggest having a separate speed value that you can change so you can run the robot slower when testing. You can also use this later as a way to change the speed via serial as well.

# Motor speed between 0.0 (off) and 1.0 (full speed)
speed = 0.3           # 30%

Now all you need to do is get your serial commands and change the motor outputs to match. The exact commands will depend on how your motors are wired.

Here is an example assuming:

• M1 is the left side motors
• M2 is the right side motors
• +ve values spin the motors forwards
• command holds the command from the serial

# Make the command upper case and remove any white space
command = command.upper().strip()

# Get the power output for the currently set speed
power = maxPower * speed

# Action the command
if command == 'STOP':
    PBR.MotorsOff()
elif command == 'FORWARD':
    PBR.SetMotor1(power)
	PBR.SetMotor2(power)
elif command == 'REVERSE':
    PBR.SetMotor1(-power)
	PBR.SetMotor2(-power)
elif command == 'LEFT':
    PBR.SetMotor1(0)
	PBR.SetMotor2(power)
elif command == 'RIGHT':
	PBR.SetMotor1(power)
    PBR.SetMotor2(0)
elif command == 'SPIN-L':
    PBR.SetMotor1(-power)
	PBR.SetMotor2(power)
elif command == 'SPIN-R':
	PBR.SetMotor1(power)
    PBR.SetMotor2(-power)
elif command == 'SLOW':
    # Set speed to a low value for following commands
	speed = 0.3
elif command == 'FAST':
    # Set speed to a high value for following commands
	speed = 0.7
else:
    print('Unknown command: ' + command)