README.md

Smartcar shield 2.0

A versatile and easy to use vehicle platform for hobby & Academic projects

Description

This repository, includes everything necessary to set up a Smartcar 2.0. The 100% open hardware robot down to component level.

The Smartcar, is a vehicular educational platform, which enables the user to develop various robotic applications in an affordable, pedagogic and easy way. It is intended to be accessible for persons with basic programming knowledge and little to no experience of electronics. It additionally supports the needs of more experienced users.

Smartcar 2.0 (In development)

Licence: CERN-OHL-P

Features;

• Mounting space for SBC; Beagle AI64, Play, Pi, Jetson Nano, etc
• Reference implimentation of Arduino / [Smartcar Library](https://github.com/rosmo-robot/smartcar_shield/blob/master/README.md
• Reference implimentation of ROS2/Linorobot2
• Use of 4s LifePO4 or 3s Lipo batteries
• Dual motor drivers for 4x4 & optional mecanum drive
• mikroBUS socket
• Expanded I2C/ SPI connectors using Breakout Garden, Qwiic

Project Status

• Motor board ordered awaiting testing

• Pico board ordered awaiting testing

We hope Smartcar 2.0 interesting to makers, schools and universities. We realise there's no such thing as a universal robot platform, and there are risks in trying to be all things to all people. We however drawn to seeing what's possible with modularity and testing the edges of interoperability.

Smartcar 2.0 BOM (In development)

• 1 x Motor board ordered awaiting testing £11
• 1 X Pico board £5
• 4 x Brushed motors (530rpm @ 12V) £40.50
• 1 x Olimex Pico
• 2 x 40pin 2.54 pitch long male pin headers
• 1 x 3S LifePO4 -recommended 105 x 33 x 25 or potentially dangerous 3S Lipo battery 135mm42mm25mm 304g ~$21 2200Mah > ~$38 4000Mah 135x42x21
• 2 x Front Bumper

Optional add ons

• • x VL45L0x ToF distance sensors (optional)
• • X BNO-85 IMU (Optional)
• • X Servo controller
• • X line follower board
• • X SPI or I2C Click boards
• • X Aluminum base plate
• • Whatever you can bolt to your compute module and get ROS2 to understand, eg cameras, Lidar

Optional alternative Microcontroller Esp32 S3 (Waveshare)

• Used with Smartcar Library
• Linorobot 2 via wifi transport
• May also support Microblocks

Single Board Computers (SBC)

We intend to develop some scripts for setting up robotics software on commonly used Single Board Computers which can be added to the basic microcontroller based platform. The OS will be Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

The supported hardware may include;

• Yuzuki chameleon (OSHW)
• Beaglebone Play
• Beaglebone Ai-64 (OSHW)

Installed software may include

• Block editor code (TBC)
• Pyrobots configuration script
• Python app providing a Webui for teleop Pi GPIO > Micromod.
• Python Robotics Pi GPIO > Micromod
• ROS2/Linorobot2 USB > Micromod
• Rosboard USB > Micromod
• Visual circuit USB > Micromod
• LGPIO & script to set up GPIO
• Wetty with Kaa
• Some demo computer vision code

Linorobot:

BLDC Version

• Offering an alternate/upgraded BLDC motor board using SimpleFOC, but re-using the 'Modules' board
• Perhaps using Nema17 BLDC to give access to brackets & gearboxes

License

MIT & CERN-OHL-P for Smartcar 2.0 hardware