Update PCA9685 driver to latest Adafruit CircuitPython driver

autorope / donkeycar

Open source hardware and software platform to build a small scale self driving car.

http://www.donkeycar.com

MIT License

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Update PCA9685 driver to latest Adafruit CircuitPython driver #1178

Open Ezward opened 1 month ago

Ezward commented 1 month ago

Fixes https://github.com/autorope/donkeycar/issues/1177

change pi and nano install to install the new driver.
update pins.py to use new driver to provide output and pwm pins on a PCA9685 board.
Change the PCA9685 actuator to be a subclass of PulseController, so it inherits the underlying pin provider and pulse controller api. This elimnates the duplicate code in pins.py and actuator.py.
[ ] Test PCA9685 drivetrains on RaspberryPi 4
[ ] Test PCA9685 drivetrains on RaspberryPi 5
[ ] Test PCA9685 drivetrains on Jetson Nano
[ ] Test I2c OLED

Ezward commented 1 month ago

I tested this with a RaspberryPi 5 and PCA9685 and a servo using the calibrate command. It worked as expected. I think we still want to test on an actual car before we release it.

Ezward commented 1 month ago

The code as-is (commmit bca136abf130601088f89760bf635c9841084c80) has a bug in the throttle somewhere. Steering works correctly, but throttle does not. This is likely in the PwmThrottle part and how it interacts with the pin, possibly how the pin is started. However, I have also found that we don't really need this update; the current code works perfectly fine on a RaspberrPi 5 using the latest RaspberryPi OS (bookworm), so I'm pausing work on this branch.