EspressoBot In Driving Mode

Espresso Bot - Small Bot Based On Powerful Esp-32 Processor

This is a 6 inch long small bot that was made to show off the Mark-Toys Espressif Esp-32 module.   The bot runs a BLE (bluetooth) GATT server and is then controlled by an Android App or optionally has a small slot to hold an RF control interface for basic movement.

The Esp-32 board by Mark-Toys is the brain and is behind the display in this picture.

The board has been done to have connectors for PWM outputs suitable for motor control and those then go to the small blue board that has the higher current motor drivers.

A TFT graphics display allows the bot to show us it's range sensors and table edge detection in near realtime as well as wheel speed settings and actual speeds (from encoders).

The Esp32 dev board can be seen on the IoT page of this webpage.

Videos of this bot in action are seen on youtube as follows:
- EspressoBot Bluetooth control and going back and fourth on a table is HERE
- EspressoBot Seeks out an pushes an astronaut off of the table
- EspressoBot Avoids hitting an astronaut pedestrian as it drives along

EspressoBot uses the versatile counters on the Dev board to do wheel odometry.

The 1.8" TFT display is controlled over SPI and it's controller is the ST7735 controller.  I have added on top of the low level driver routines to do bargraph and checkboxes seen here. 

This bot runs on a 7.2 volt LiPo cell under the bot with a digital meter to show bat level.

On the front of this bot there are 5 VL53L0X time of flight distance detecting sensors.   Two face down on the left and right for edge of table detection and 3 face forward with outter two slightly pointing to right and left.  This picture shows the ranges for the 3 in yellow. 

The picture also shows for right and left motors a bar graph for speed setting in white and measured wheel encoder speed in yellow so 4 bar graphs for wheel speed indication.

Visit my robotic subsystem page to see the VL53L0X and TFT display in more detail.

Espresso Bot