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michaelkubina / SpotMicroESP32

My take on a SpotMicro with an optimized design for supportfree 3D-printing. It utilizes an ESP32-DevKitC for the low-level control of the electronics. The heavy computation will be made by external devices, which in return have the power to command the robot.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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ESP32 Vs Raspberry Pi Zero #7

Closed Annihil8ted closed 3 years ago

Annihil8ted commented 3 years ago

Hello! I've been following your project pretty closely and I wanted to start off and say thank you/you've done an amazing job! I've got the entire chassis printed and assembled and have just the electronic plate left.

I noticed that you recently posted a preliminary outline of how you plan to place your electronics. I was wondering if I could make a small request and ask if you can also provide a model where a raspberry pi zero is used instead?

Maybe this deserves another post but I was wondering why the ESP32 over Rpi Zero W? I get that overall, it's microcontroller vs full blown OS but it seems to me that RPI would provide a path for more advance features later down the road?

Is there anything else that you might need assistance on? I'm a software engineer and have a 3D printer on hand to help development and test if needed.

michaelkubina commented 3 years ago

I am happy that there are already some peoply actually printing my design - this is so cool :-) Do you share your progresses anywhere public?

I am not sure if you are familiar with FreeCAD, because if so you could mod it by yourself so it would work with a Raspi Zero and suit your needs - i have provided the design-files as well. I am not sure if the making of a derivate with the screwholes placed specifically for a RaspiZero would be enough to mount the raspi nicely. The way it is powered and flashed needs to be considered as well, because when using usb-cables internally, the placement of the whole pcb must be with this in mind. There is not much space and i already had to leave spots blank and rearrange everything multiple times for the ESP32 already.

The Raspi Zero has the power-in and data-in in bad spots, which could likely lead to the cable getting pressed against the PCA9685-PWM-Board or LM2596 Buck-Converter. I cant guarantee any of this will work, but i have added a "mods" folder within the parts folder. There you will find an EXPERIMENTAL-Version for the raspi zero. You will need 3x M2.5x8 screws. The taller pins next to it are for the TTL-Adapter of the ESP32-CAM...if you dont need these, then simply delete the last operation in the FreeCAD-File and export a new STL. If you want to print this, than do it all at your own risk! It might be a waste of PLA, i cant tell...but i really hope it is what you requested and that it work like you expected it.

To answer your question why the ESP32 and not something else? It just because i had it here already and played around with it. There is no real reason, but its cheap, has a lot of features and i already had the enviroment set up for it. But there is a lot of variant of it as well, which makes buying it a bit messy. And actually, as you said, it's more of a microcontroller than a microcomputer.

I will close this ticket and i hope a was able to give you what you wished. If not, then consider it a blueprint for modding...supporting this as well would bind to much of my time ;-)