I love the idea of using an e-ink display to give changeable information to the zoomie. There are 1 inch x 1/2 inch modules available but it could get expensive.

Chris, I pick up Steve's idea and put it a little further ... The QR code could deliver even more information. For example: "slow down, curve ahead. curvature will be x" "parking lot to the right" "slow down, stop sign ahead" That way, the zoom could be proactive instead of just reacting. Maybe this great advantage is worth prolonging your loop cycle up to 10ms. Also, to push it eben more: instead of putting QR Code labels on your track, why not build-in small monochrome e-ink displays? That way you could also direct your traffic and stuff :) Enough said, enjoy your pizza tonight! 🍕🍕🍕

Wow, Steves QR Code suggestion is really fascinating! Impressive cross-thinking :)

Good work. FYI on the Pi Pico 2 W *wireless* version (and presumably on the earlier Pi Pico W), the LED is connected to the wireless module for some reason and so it is not controlled via the normal GPIO software. Instead, it is... led = machine.Pin("LED", machine.Pin.OUT) ... led.on() ... led.off()

As a Physics and STEM teacher, I wanted to let you know that I am so appreciative of you sharing your journey with us. I am learning so much. I look forward to seeing your next iteration!

Very nice job looking very good!!!👍👌💯

You are probably too far down the road to change things, but did you consider using the Tiny Code Reader from Useful Sensors and a small QR code to provide the Zoomie with the absolute distance position via the QR Code data.

I look forward to hours of content of you cutting and sanding tape! :-) I appreciate your effort in turning this project around. It must have been immensely satisfying to engineer a better solution.

Well sounds like ya get what ya pay for kinda thing. If ur going for more speed and more accuracy its ganna cost ya im guessing. Maybe make ur tollarance a little (or allot) wider at first and try to get it narrowed after u accomplish that. Is there a different style encoder you would be able to use? Dont give up ever brotha!

Cheer up, you'll prove that country singer lady wrong (what regards the zoomtown experiment) ... btw just had an idea how to (maybe) steer much more precisely but that would be a whole different mechanical approach ;) And yes, my offer is still valid!

Look up present day practices in vehicle steering systems & control technology.. ACKERMANN STEERING..( this tech. is 100+ years old) for basic understanding. steering front wheels for turns/radius curvature..,the left & right wheel speed difference is a function of "tan" of turning angle..one added to one wheel ref. speed while corresponding value subtracted from the other ... , depending on direction of turn.. When turning the outer wheel has to rotate much faster compared to the inner wheel. hence the propotional difference in their relative speeds is a function of turning angle. Wheel diameter difference accross width of wheel/tire...to maintain auto centering on track/road . The tapered width of wheels with smaller diameter on the outside & larger diameter on the inside of the wheels allows for this auto correction.

This is almost "rocket science". !!! I am impressed by your persistence and methods used. You will certainly be able to overcome the problems.

Hey Chris, i can relate because i just spent the last two days trying to get a diy voice control working for a TIG welder. Finally did get it working and my point is that i'm confident that with all your skills and knowledge you will solve the problems. Good luck!

You have endeavoured to construct a zoomy to achieve your design goals. Now that your good experiments have pretty much defined what the current zoomy is capable of, which, due to mechanical realities, appears to fall short of the original design aims, nevertheless its still a capable bot. I suggest that the zoom town should now be modified in light of the zoomy capabilities and not to continue to try to further modify the zoomy to fit the zoom town. Perhaps less zoomys', wider garage space, reduced speed, etc. will still result in a very nice zoom town demo. Its been great to see all the details of your experiments and quite instructive of the methodology to test just what can be achieved with some quite modest components. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to the next episodes whatever the outcome 🙂

This will no doubt save me some frustration, thanks. BTW I found having an old analogue “sweep” meter around invaluable for visualising pot action.

I just clicked on it to see what was going on. Then I realised I didn't have 1hr 1min and 12 secs to spare. I will be popping back to this video over the next few days. That's my 30 odd cents worth.

For localisation, you might consider using simple bar codes on the layout at key locations. I.e read with the line following sensors

Discarding a design and starting again is always a tough decision. In addition to questions of time, quality and cost, for me it was always a question of whether the redesign or optimization within the existing design would cause more swearing ;-)

Where can I find the graphe which describes the effect of light ? Thanks for sharing

Still no download for 033, hope will be posted soon.

I use the #13 parting tool for my letters, start to finish. Great video!

Looks like a normal parking problem. Sometimes you have to, in tight turn situations, swing out towards the centre of the road before making the turn. Perhaps the system of "locating" other vehicles could put in a delay in before manoeuvering. Getting really interesting now. Maybe that should read even more interesting. Whatever, just accept enjoying it very much. Thanks

Could prob program the spindel to grab the collet and then move percisely into a collet wrench thats like welded nearby to tighten it up, i just run a natural stone cnc, im not this advanced as i dont have any schooling but i can program and make tools go where they are supposed to 😂 i went from using a hand grinder to self teaching myself how to run pretty cool stuff on a big CMS stone cnc. This little bit thing you designed is amazing. I recently started using tools that most shops dont do in our industry. Recently got a big passion for going outside the box when it comes to cnc machining, and have done cool things on stone that impress most in my trade :p today i learned what a collet chuck even was and made a makeshift DIY tool with a tool holder and collet.. being held in the collet is a sort of screw that can fasten a hand grinder/polishing wheel with velcrow that holds stone polishing pads and made a very dark, man made stone look so polished, you could see your reflection. The video was great and found it useful.

TOF or triangulation ?

Could an AS5600 read its underside through the PCB when no traces or planes are going underneath?

Given these issues with using MicroPython, would you recommend using C++ instead?

This is exactly how a tutorial should be: clear and concise. I finally have a circuit on my friend’s Pi 4 model B that tracks the state of a toggle switch to control code being run on the CPU. Thanks for showing the simplest possible wiring. This cleared up a lot of confusion I had about working with RPis.

Great tips, thank you. I wonder if you could answer a question about the Assistant in Thonny. Yesterday it was showing six or so warnings. I ignored them because at the time there was more important things to do. Now I want to see those warnings again but it won't show them to me now. Do you know how to get those warnings back?

First great set of videos Question - Could instead of using the Global Pb_Switch_State why not use the Warning_LED.Value() so the if and elif lines in the code would be : if (Pb_Switch.value() == 1) and (Warning_LED.value() == 0): elif (Pb_Switch.value() == 0) and (Warning_LED.value() == 1): What are your thoughts?

A few days ago MicroPython team released version 1.23.0 and according to the release notes you should experience a slight performance improvement. I am looking forward to see how much that can benefit your project. Quote "The rp2 port has added the new machine.USBDevice dynamic USB driver, and has had firmware performance optimisations applied to critical parts of the runtime and VM, giving about a 10% performance boost."

Micropython's garbage collector loses track of stuff and leaves tiny bits of garbage distributed throughout RAM. You can call gc.collect() all you want. Soon you can't allocate a one kilobyte array even if you've got 90% free memory.

No garbage here. Another interesting and informative video. Thanks.

Is 033 source code posted? Didn't see it on the bottom of the list.

>> 11:38 << You are very much welcome - it's good to see I could help a little :) Enjoy your friday's pizza! We will go to an indian restaurant tomorrow and I am really looking forward to it

Hello Sir! Your video is very informative! I am having a hard time importing the module AS5600. I use Thonny, and get an error on the line "from as5600 import *". The error is "no module named 'as5600'. I tried installing the module using the Tool command Manage packages, but as5600 can not be found. Same issue when trying to installing the module in a command shell using pip. Can you help me with this problem? Thanks!

I did mines just like yours all i need now are the fans i just bought them on amazon the size are 120mm witch are 4.7 inches the booth is very surdy i put it all together but i didnt made the wholes but no worries i will drill and use the mini saw i have in handy sir its an awesome project thank you

I am very surpiresd about the low count of views. It is amazing! I really like the idea of ZoomTown, and am very excited for it. Also, you do a good job explaining. Good job!

Do you have a video explaining how to use continuous servos

Excellent video! I have a nice collection of hollows and rounds, but was missing only a #6 round. Your method allowed me to make the plane with tools (chisels) I already own and saved me from having to buy $600 worth of specialized floats. Thank you!

Looks like a masterpiece.....🧐👍

I watche the video thinking, " should be able to make shutters for my windows" Once I saw the thousnds of $$$ I needed in machinery, I decidex making shutters is not for me 😂 Great video though, thank you for sharing your knowledge

I was trying to set the timer frequency to 20MHz, however the code seemed to stop working at 125KHz, I was wondering if that’s the limit of the machine.Timer class

Again, great piece of engineering.

Today was a short video. But things are evolving. Keep up !!!

Looking good Chris!

You could try C

Thanks Siŕ. Good lesson.

Great stuff man! as a self teaching person, the structure in the explanations plus getting to see your process its amazing. Diagrams so good! I'd pushed back a bit retaking my autonomous vehicle project, have taken notes on several things you state during your videos! I'll be heading back, surely taking a look to your links. Cheers from Mexico.

Hi Chris, would you consider using a no80 scraper plane?

THANKS!