This video:

Chat:
Al:
Al: 180kg.cm Parameters:
– Model: XJD-X1
Al:

Index:
00:00 Jeff: Mentions shorter screws and bolts.
00:35 Jeff: Talks about R/C servos, wire ferrules,
cable clamps, grounding the frame
02:45 Jeff: Gives a status update on what Terry is doing.
He has his dual channel Cytron driver board working with an Ada Fruit ItsyBitsy board.
Possibly weird problems with ground wires.
05:10 Jeff: Talks about snow blower concepts.
05:50 Jeff: Is back to indexing ROS Agriculture videos.
200 of 250 completed.
07:20 Al: Talks about file maintenance.
09:50 Al: Talks about workspace maintenance.
13:30 Al: Found out why his internet connection was being rejected.
15:25 Al: Is trying to find old code/videos.
We go through how to find the ROS Lawn Tractor Meeting index
and the ROS Agriculture meeting index.
Turns out it was the description of creating a path with Dubin’s is what he was looking for.

Lawn Tractor Automation YouTube page:

Index for Lawn Tractor Automation group:
http://sampson-jeff.com/RosAgriculture/LawnTractorMeetingNotes.txt

Index for the original ROS Agriculture group (~250 videos):
http://sampson-jeff.com/RosAgriculture/readme.txt
http://sampson-jeff.com/RosAgriculture/ros-agriculture-youtube20230104.txt

Computer Okay so I haven't gotten much done since Uh last week the only thing I did I ran Over to Home Depot and bought some Shorter screws and shorter bolts to Replace all the ones on my front end That I was showing last time And I was going to buy the the two 5 16 Bolts the whole that does the actual Steering but they had a really crappy Selection there so I'll have to go to Menards and get a bag of bolts there That so I get at least two that are the Same kind and other than that I'm pretty Much happy with the the size of the Screws and everything and after that I'm Not sure where I'll go from there but One other thing I noticed on that or Thing that occurred to me what started It was I I've got that super Servo Dealing it's got the big uh over here It's got the the connector so you put in Two big wires into that and I was just Gonna find some random wire like maybe About that size wire I don't even know What that is but I ended up finding Something a little bit smaller than that And I was when I put the the wires into These screw terminals they keep popping Out But I put them in here to keep they keep Popping out or just working their way Out see over here on this one it's got The the wires for the motor stuck in

There and it's got a strain relief on so Those Generally stay in so anyway I got those Wires let's go put those wires as I got Something called crimp on ferrules so You take your stranded wire and you Crimp this thing on the end it's just a Little round pin that you crimp on there So I stuck those in there I thought I Should still straight and relief that Somehow so I found these little cable Clamps and I was gonna bolt those to the Side of my frame just a strain really For the wire it turns out the smallest One I had was three sixteenths and the Wire the two wires Twisted together were Not it wouldn't hold those tight so I'd Either have to cram something in there Or go out and buy some eighth inch Clamps which so far I haven't found Those I think I've seen them listed Somewhere but I can't you know walk in And buy them and And anyway so while I was looking at it I thought you know also I realized my Frame is not grounded on that you know That whole front end the whole front Steering thing where it's got the servo Bolted some bolted to a frame bolted to The axle and all this stuff that's just All floating out in space because I've Got a piece of wood that connects the Back to the front so there's no Electrical connection from that frame to

Anything else so while I was at it I Twisted a green wire in with my my Yellow and black wire that I'm using so Then I thought okay now that'll fit in The clamps I stuck it in there it's Still too loose so I could either put Put one or two pieces of heat shrink on It and then put it in there I could just Wrap some electrical tape around and put It in there so it's that's really not Stopping me it's just something that Something else to distract me on that So that's pretty much where I'm at on That my mini tractor project as I put New screws in and I'm looking at the Wiring just just basically to distract Me from doing anything else Okay the next thing on my list here uh Terry said he's not gonna be here this Time and but he said he's got that uh Dual Channel Citron board and he said When he got it he took it out of the box Hooked up the motors hooked it up Probably to his drill battery he had Some kind of some kind of power source So he could push the buttons and run the Motors backwards and forwards so then he Connected that board to his his itsy Bitsy board which is kind of like a Teensy teensy or something it's got a uh Arm processor on it and he said that Would not control he couldn't get the Motors to move at all by doing that and Then out of desperation he tried hooking

Five volts right to the pwm pin and they Still wouldn't turn so he tried a bunch Of other things and he sent me an email And I did some dig and I said well on This one tutorial they showed the ground Of the battery connected to the ground Of the logic and I just assumed that Would have been done on the board Already but I said well I don't know but You can try that so later he wrote back Says yeah I hook those together now it Works and I said well what if you unhook That wire so he got back to me says well I unhooked the wire and it still works So so we're both baffled now what is Wrong with that why it didn't work in The first place and why it does work now And why it doesn't stop working again so So that was the uh that was the update From him that he's got that to the point He's doing that and he said now that he He said so at night and he can run the Motors from the board and on the board Uh you know it does the pwm and Direction and then he said he's also got He's sending serial Commands to control The speed and I don't know if that just Meant he's sending a you know to type in A number and hit enter if that's what He's doing or if he has something else Going so he says the next thing he's Going to do is look at his quadrature Decode And I know on the boards the arm boards

I buy are new enough they got the Quadrature decode peripheral built into Them but just a quick look on his Processor which I think is an atmel Sam 21 you know Sam D21 Sam 21d anyway it's Something about Sam and a 21 and a d and That one I don't I didn't notice that That has that built in so in a case like That you can always drop back to Arduino Libraries that are going to do Quadrature decode they say pick two pins And it assigns interrupts to those and Does some fancy lookup tables in your Code and everybody says oh those work Great well I've I I wouldn't use that if I didn't have to but if you if that's What you what you got then I guess I'd Say go ahead and try it and run it until It until it doesn't work and then you Can do something else with it at that Point Uh I I was thinking of Terry while I was Not moving my snow I and the other thing I was thinking of you never I watch YouTube and every once while these Videos pop up says oh here's this giant Train with this giant rotating blade on The front blasting through the all the Mountain passes you know it's moving Just huge amounts of snow you could Build a small one like that just get a Small rotary disc and put on the front Of your thing and drive forward so you Don't have to have all the extra augers

And the impeller wheels and all that you Just got this giant impeller stuck out Front and you push it into the snow and It it just starts blowing the snow all Over the place so I I was thinking about That too while I was up moving snow Today Um let's see that's I guess that's all I Got on snow and what Terry was doing and My screws so I I've been spending the Last few weeks uh back on the Ross Agriculture stuff so I've been going Through it indexing videos I'd I'd got To the point since I think 2021 was the Last date that I put down and the last One I'd posted I have 166 out of 250 Videos indexed and that's both the Community meetings and the lawn tractor Meetings And I started in on it again and I see As of last night I'd finished off all The lawn tractor ones and those were Getting pretty grueling towards the end But I I got those finished off so I Think I'm up to now I have 200 indexed Which means I got 50 more to go and That's they're going to be the community Means and that ranges all the way from Like the second meeting up to you know Halfway through they just randomly in Between there I have to go do those Uh what was their point I was going to Make on that so I I last night I I Committed myself and said Okay I I re I

Made a copy of the file but yesterday's Date on it and changed the comment of The top scene I've got 200 videos done Now so sometime today I'll upload that To my website again and I'll just put a Note on uh the lawn tractor group saying That I have done this I'm not sure Anybody cares but I'll put it on there Anyway and then automatically if you're Watching the YouTube video and you click On the link and it takes you there then It'll just be the newer have the newer Stuff that's indexed out there And I guess that's all I've got to whine About right now so I'll turn it over to You Starting with the last item first Um That's awesome because I was moving some Files around and came across Trying to find them here and I'll share My screen Um Some videos from some meetings when I Was saving them to um Google Drive and I was wondering if you Had these Um That was the new lawn tractor group is The ones you're talking about yeah here I'll share my screen Um I I think I downloaded those and put Those out to YouTube but uh I can go Back and check

So I'm not exactly sure what you're seeing Here but Um So the dates are like March 21 through August 21 Is there any way to make us make a Screenshot of that Uh sure Take a screenshot and then post it Somehow so I know what's out there because that's On your computer right Yes it's on my uh Nas Drive because I was taking stuff off the Actual Google Drive where you were then Uploading stuff to there and so I I I Could check you know each one to make Sure we've got Got them all accounted for Um Because I was trying to save some space On the Google Drive and so I was moving This stuff onto my NAS drive and Was just trying to figure out whether You had them or not Um I better stop sharing because It seems like it's taken a long time There So I just put that in your um Into a slack message okay I'll go back and look over those and Check because the ones are on the Google Drive I think I took all those and

Uploaded those to YouTube so I think They're all in one place now but I I'm Not sure I'll check that Uh the other thing that I was gonna Share was I haven't made a lot of progress On the tractor Um because I I got simulation working Well well done you know reasonably and Um And so I was going back looking at my Workspace On my Tractor which is And I'm sharing the screen Um So I have like a simulation Works Space And a web Bots workspace and then the Actual catkin workspace which is um Foreign In it and so I was I don't know whether it's a distraction Or gonna add value but I was going back Trying to ask myself so if I create a Workspace Um Sort of small but I was thinking about Creating What are the files having three Folders one for the lawn tractor Simulation one for actually Physically running and one that's got

Common files Between them so Um I haven't implemented this yet Because I was trying to clean up A laptop to Put this on so I don't break my actual Tractor but these were the files that I Was thinking would be in each one so The simulation would Have gazebo whatever I needed from a Gazebo standpoint would have a launch File for Launching simulation Um And it would have Yaml files you know specifically for I don't know what I was thinking there Plus other related yaml files Um I think because this is move base this Would be move based and not move base Said move base Flex the other one Um I think there might be a little bit Differences there so The physical one that would have An include for The um Behavior tree that Vinnie wrote They would have the GPS Odom In the source because that's again Physical not related to the simulation It would have this move base State Machine python script

And a couple launch files specifically To you know the physical GPS And then in the common Part Um I found some stuff about send goals That I want to talk about Um but that would be in the common part Because I think that would Well I don't know now because it moved Base versus move based Flex whether that Would work or not but Anyway the maps would be common If we had a mesh for the Dae file that Would be in there And then put the support files there so That's the structure I'm thinking about Um To try to clean up my workspace So that's Pretty much the only thing I've spent on from a robot standpoint The other thing That I spent time on was I'd asked you Jeff The last time whether you had access to Um A website and what I found out is that My internet Provider has some DNS entries that was Keeping me from Getting to Well it's trying to find a file here Um There's a file in Ubuntu called

Resolve.conf And it's got DNS entries in it in darned If I couldn't Um I never put those in there but somehow They got in there from Bios and it was causing me not to be Able to get to some things so I spent Some time Cleaning up or changing My DNS entries so that was uh Wasn't exactly robot related but I Thought I would just Chair that is so if you can't get to A website like DNS leak tests or you can't get to VPN sites like nordvpn or Um What's one I ended up using proton VPN It may be because this resolved File is Loaded with DNS entries that are keeping You from being able to get to those so I Thought that was rather interesting But back to the navigation and the Videos that you were mentioning You may not remember it but you and I And Juan Found a waypoint planner that Juan had On his machine and we fiddled around With it And got it Working and it graphed Um

Uh some waypoints that you that it would Execute do you or Remind me how do I search where's the Index for the Videos because I wanted to go back and Re Re Um Marie look at that which videos Our videos are Ross agriculture videos It was just you and I and Juan talking So it would have been Um you know post Ross agriculture okay You can find it various ways you can go Out to our pins Link in general and It'll tell you there of the index or any Of the YouTube videos has it down at the Bottom and when I post once a week Saying here's what we did this this time The link is on there so there's lots of Different places you can find that index A pointer to that index file So I just go to slack right now and look At last week's meeting down at the Bottom there's a bunch of links one says Here's the Here's the index for Lawn tractor group Down go down past all this keep going Keep going so right there on that block Of stuff it says it says index for lawn Tractor automation group so you click on That And I see it takes right to the file

That that's in a directory if you back Up One Directory it's got It's got the Index for lot for for lawn tractor stuff And then it's got like three or four uh Just incrementing files for Ross Agriculture and it's got the readme file Readme file is really only for the Ross Agriculture stuff so it's just a place To store the lawn tractor meeting Uh what I call Lawn tracking meeting Notes is really the index so if you look In that as a text file you can download The text file on your computer if you Want And there's there was that back in Ross Agriculture there's something funny About all the if I cut the chat out of Let's see I was cutting the chat from YouTube and pasted it in and it would Trim the links off and put some stupid Characters then I don't think I have That problem anymore because that's not The way I'm doing I'm generating taking Chat directly from zoom and putting it In here so that that should work so just At the top of the file if you know what You're looking for just just do a search On this file But now I forgot what you were talking About Um Waypoint Waypoint okay it's just yeah Just search Waypoint see what comes up There's only one huh yeah well that's Hard to believe because

Back in Ross agriculture is going to Show up about 500 times Or you can search for navigation or you Could search for uh I can't think what Our other And this just happens to be if if I Happen to put down the appropriate thing You're looking for then you might be Able to find it otherwise I think at one Time I should just have a thing that Says keywords anything I can think of That was there just put a whole list of Keywords on it but like you know I've I've got way too many things to do so I I'm not going to go back through the Whole thing right now and do that Okay well you've answered the other Thing you can do is see the names all Have a name with a colon so if it was Something on on Juan's lawn tractor put In one colon and search for that and It'll show you every every time You know he he posted some or every time He said something or Yeah so that's another way to find stuff There Okay so that's what um That's what I got today because the I had found some files Um Let's see if I can Find it here quickly Uh Well I'm back to my Google Drive here

Anyway And also if you go out to the uh the Original Ross agriculture stuff even Though It if later today you check I've got an Extra what extra 34 videos indexed and And even there you know back back then We were talking about stocks I remember Uh Matt talking about going to Argentina To work on on Juan's lawn tractors so There's you know chances there's Discussions in there about what they're Doing and how the stuff works too so Yeah this was Um You'll be happy that they were talking About using docker Um Yeah there was some specific this Generated a specific visual file a Visual of the past Not in our viz a separate And um It's 20 20. Will that open up this one put that out Now that's not it Anyway Um I I was you know obviously given Where I was at I was going to try to use This With the simulator and see if I could Publish or create Um A waypoint path using that

Process and I thought going back to look At the videos would be Useful yeah like dubins yeah that was Like remember Generating the script that would run a Dubin's path There's the image of that darn thing Remember that image That stuff we were doing Yeah yeah there's a video on that Look at that I even mentioned at 12 31 In this video See if that video uh Probably one of them that I just moved 21 March 5th That one if you got to the actual YouTube page That that exact picture is on the On the video for it That it's that video That it what did it say March 5th Hold on I'm just torturing you here bear with me How do I get that off I wanted to go to Where 12 31 in the video You gonna hang in there with me Let's see Excellent There we go that's what I was looking For Sometimes the line says radius equals Two So what they've done

Awesome That's what you're looking for you mean You're looking for that just to Reference that thing you saw or that's What you're actually trying to do in Real life at this point Well I was going to try to pick a couple I mean in my simulated Version I was going to try to create This path and see if it would Run that path In my simulated yard Okay So Anyway that helped me um Sir Remind me of where things were and how They were working So your simulated lawn tractor is doing Exactly what it should be doing now no Heavens no Last time we spoke you just thought You'd move on to something else Last time we spoke we I still haven't Resolved the speed so once I get the Speed resolved then I'll try to give it One of these simple paths Oh I remember now you've kept changing The numbers but it didn't seem to go any Faster right thinking back I think when It's going back through the videos Watching when you first started that you Said well here it is driving and it was Driving at like nine tenths of a meter

Per second and as you went on throughout The meeting it got slower and slower I I Don't know why but When you first started it was going Almost one meter per second Yes that's still a problem that needs to Be Solved and um I was hoping once I got that solved then I would try to give it a Path similar to um Uh One of these simple Um Paths to follow So that would be my um Get this page resolved and then try to Give it to simple Is this called a dubin's path I think we're using dubin's bathroom Yeah yeah whatever that little Circular thing is called In fact I think the whole thing was Generated with dubins even the the long Straight lines you just simply said I'm Here I want to go there and it said oh I Can do that with a straight line for you So I think the straight lines and the Curves at the end are all created with Doing this path Um That's where we're at I can't really think anything else at The moment that

I have been doing or thinking about so I think we can pause the video