Installation Issues

Glad to hear you have it all working now :)

Also we liked your video, the Meccano chassis is a nice touch.

• Resistors do not care which direction they are fitted, so this will not be a problem
• If the wheels are running slowly it is probably that they are not getting enough power
• The USB will likely not have enough power to drive both the motors
• Could you give us a diagram and / or photos of the circuit you have built, it may simply be a circuit issue

Hi Raoul,

Couple of ideas what may be the problem, here are some thoughts and questions:

1. If you are building the reversible PiCy you will need to use the ReverseKeyBorgC.py script instead of RemoteKeyBorgC.py
2. If you are supplying the Raspberry Pi directly from a 5v source you will not need a regulator between the source and the Raspberry Pi, having one will cause problems
3. Are the two power supply connections from a single box, if they are they may be linked internally and a large drain on the 5v 1A may be affecting the 5v 2A supply
4. Are the power supplies battery based (a web link may be helpful if you have one), if they are can you make sure they are fully charged
5. Can you try connecting with an Ethernet cable and see if it still crashes, some WiFi modules require a fair amount of power and may be helping to push the supply over what it can handle
6. Is the supply to the PicoBorg the same one connected to the four relays, if the relays use the supply for the Raspberry Pi they may be causing power spikes that the Raspberry Pi cannot handle

Hopefully something here helps :)

1. Get the kernel revision using:
   uname -a
   It would also be helpful to know what distribution you are running (e.g. Raspbian)
2. Run the menu.sh script using
   sudo ~/picoborg/menu.sh
   and then try to toggle the motor
3. Try to turn on drive #1 manually using:
   sudo bash
echo "4" > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo "out" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio4/direction
echo "1" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio4/value
exit
4. After manually turning on drive #1 check the state using:
   sudo cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio4/direction
sudo cat /sys/class/gpio/gpio4/value
5. Measure the voltages (using a multimeter, with respect to GND) at:
   
   • V+
   • M1+
   • M2+
   • M3+
   • M4+
   • GPIO header pin 1 (3v3)
   • GPIO header pin 2 (5v)
   • GPIO header pin 6 (Ground)
   • GPIO header pin 4 (Drive #1 signal)
   • GPIO header pin 18 (Drive #2 signal)
   • GPIO header pin 8 (Drive #3 signal)
   • GPIO header pin 7 (Drive #4 signal)
6. Check the resistance or connectivity (using a multimeter) between:
   
   • The two sides of the fuse (white rectangle labelled 'N')
   • M1- and GND
   • M2- and GND
   • M3- and GND
   • M4- and GND

These things happen, as long as it did not damage the Raspberry Pi then all is well :)

The fuse we use is rated for 2 A and is a 1206 surface mount size (will need to be rated for at least 20 V)

The script seems fine, have you run the script without the PicoBorg attached to the Raspberry Pi to see if the PicoBorg is the problem?

Also have you installed any other software for controlling boards or GPIO pins?
Some drivers will hold on to the GPIO pins and prevent them being used normally,
for example the LedBorg driver holds GPIO pins 17, 21, and 22 when installed.
We did have someone else experiencing this type of problem with a real time clock module installed.

Hi Joe,

Sorry about the late reply, we have been playing around and have not found a setup with the same issue.
The best suggestion we have is that you have an old copy of the RPi.GPIO module installed, which is missing some functionality (such as the cleanup function).

Could you try opening a terminal and type the following command:
sudo easy_install RPi.GPIO

With any luck that command will update the RPi.GPIO module, which will hopefully resolve the problem :)

The problem here is that the files are in a different directory from where you are running these commands.
There are two solutions to this problem:

1. Change to your desktop directory to use them where they are:
cd ~/Desktop/

2. Move the files to your current directory using this command:
mv ~/Desktop/TurtleBorg* ./

To control the voltage output by the PicoBorg you want to drive the GPIO using PWM instead.
Recent versions of RPi.GPIO do support PWM, RasPi.TV has a code example here:
http://raspi.tv/2013/rpi-gpio-0-5-2a-now-has-software-pwm-how-to-use-it

The lower the duty cycle, the lower the effective voltage across the motor.
For example a duty cycle of 60% should give 0.6 * 5v = 3v output.

If both motors being on causes them to slow down dramatically it suggests the battery is not powerful enough to drive both properly.
What happens is the battery voltage gets lower to compensate for the power drain, this in turn slows down the motors.

If the battery cannot cope there is not much you can do with a PicoBorg to speed the motors up.
If it is a rechargable battery pack try fully charging it and see if that improves things.
Otherwise I would suggest getting a more powerful battery pack.

I think there has been a bit of a misunderstanding here.

command and time_if_needed are values you want to pass the script.

For example if you call:
sudo /home/pi/Desktop/TurtleBorg.py FORWARD 5
it should move forward for 5 seconds.

Run the following for a list of the commands:
sudo /home/pi/Desktop/TurtleBorg.py ?

As for the error, it looks like the script has not been saved correctly for some reason.
Try using the following commands to re-download the files:

cd ~/Desktop
rm TurtleBorg*
wget -O TurtleBorg.py https://www.piborg.org/downloads/TurtleBorg.txt
wget -O TurtleBorgTest.py https://www.piborg.org/downloads/TurtleBorgTest.py.txt
wget -O TurtleBorgTest.sh https://www.piborg.org/downloads/TurtleBorgTest.sh.txt
chmod +x TurtleBorg*

Unfortunately this is a bit of a nasty problem.

The big down side to gksudo is that when it the script has a problem it always seems to produce this message regardless of what the problem actually was.

We have an alternative version which does not require gksudo to run which you could try instead.
It may just work, or it might tell us what the real problem is.

Enter the following commands to download it:

cd ~
wget -O JoyBorg2.py https://www.piborg.org/downloads/JoyBorg2.py.txt
chmod +x JoyBorg2.py

Then use the following command to run it:
sudo bash -c './JoyBorg2.py > /dev/null'

You need to include the ' symbols in the command like so:
sudo bash -c 'home/pi/JoyBorg2.py > /dev/null'

It also sounds like the file is wrong somehow.
Could you open the file and take a look at the contents.

We do not have a video unfortunately, but I can try and guide you through the connections.

Firstly there is a diagram of the connections to the power and motors here:

You will want to check that these are all connected:

1. The battery / power is connected to the PicoBorg the correct way around
   One connection will be to the V+ hole for +ve, which is one of the red cables on our pre-soldered boards
   The other connection will be to the GND hole for -ve, which is the black cable on our pre-soldered boards
2. Each motor is connected to a +/- pair, such as M1+ and M1-
   On our pre-soledered boards all of the + cables are red
   On our pre-soledered boards the various - cables are the other colours of cable
3. If you have a switch then make sure it is in the on position
4. Make sure the PicoBorg is fitted in the GPIO pins correctly.
   It should be on these pins:
   
   located this way around:
   

If it still does not work, see this forum post about checking if the fuse is okay:
https://www.piborg.org/comment/818#comment-818

Okay, the first thing to do is see if a simple example works.

Open a terminal and run this command:
sudo ~/picoborg/4dc.py
When you see You can now turn on the power, press ENTER to continue press ENTER
When you see Drives to toggle (Q to quit)? type 1234 and press ENTER

If the board is working you should now have all four outputs enabled.
If this does not work let us know what happens:

1. What messages are shown on the terminal?
2. Do any of the motors move at all?

If this script does not work it is unlikely the GUI will work either.
Trying this will hopefully give us a clue as to what the problem is.