I need a board somewhat like Raspberry Pi for small robotics.
It needs to be able to interface with a camera, ultrasonic sensor, WiFi, speaker, other misc. I/O.
It needs to be capable of handing face recognition and voice recognition.
Also, it needs to be powered by a battery, preferably a 9 V.
I think video recording & playback would be useful.
I think I can handle the programming if I can understand the board.
I need to be able to flip a switch to power on & boot up.
Then auto login and auto run an app. In debian/ubuntu I should be able to do that.
I may opt to go with Android which is Java. I think I can still auto login & run app.
Expense is a big consideration. Raspberry Pi is unacceptable due to the price.
Any help with selecting a board and/or pointers to helpful docs would be appreciated.
Thanks for the reply.
Does a battery exist that can run the board?
People are building small robot cars with the Raspberry Pi 4.
If what I’m seeing is correct the Raspberry Pi boards consume a whole lot less power than any of these boards. Is that correct?
I see projects where 4 AA batteries are powering the board and 4 small motors.
I was hoping to do that with one of these boards.
Is that possible? If so, how can I power it?
The link you sent is using a Raspberry Pi 2 which is a single core ARMv6 SoC with a 1.2GHz clock speed. Our boards are quad core ARMv8 SoCs with a 1.5GHz clock speed with around 10x the computing power.
Usually LiPo batteries are used since they store 10x the energy of a Alkaline 9V.
Our boards use half the energy of a Raspberry Pi 4.
Video recording and playback consumes a lot of power.
OK I think I understand.
Would something like the link below work? That’s 5v @ 2.4 amps.
The robotics industry is in its infancy. Over the next 20 years robotics is going to explode.
Small robots with AI including Machine Learning capability will come more and more into demand. I’m trying to build fully AI/Machine Learning robots that are very small and inexpensive.
Raspberry Pi has knocked themselves out of the market due to their greed. Their boards are too expensive to have any real value. If I’m going to sell robots they must be very inexpensive, especially in today’s market.
I looked at Orange Pi & Banana Pi and may end up going with one of them but I like your Le Potato better (with reservations), partly due to the price.
I think your Le Potato is very close to what I’m looking for. I only need 1 USB input to upload code. I wish it had WiFi & Bluetooth built in. The video recording & playback would only be important for a few of the robots we’ll build. More PWM IO would be helpful for controlling motors. At least 2 Servo IOs would be helpful, though I can make GPIO work.
Not sure of using 9v battery but the mestastic guys are getting a lot of app running on a single lipo battery… and months or years with a smallish solar cell added. As far as the hardware search ESP32-CAM and you’ll see it for under $10 USD for complete hardware minus battery. For comparisons search for something like “sleep current sbc list”. Good luck!
I’m posting this from a Le Potato running off a 2.1A power bank just to test. It works.
Le Potato does not have a csi connector for a camera, so you wont be able to use a raspberry pi type camera with this board. I just tried to connect a USB digital microscope (works like a webcam, closest thing I have to one) and it drew too much power for the power bank and shut it down. I haven’t tried with my normal power supply. Your mileage may vary.
Raspberry Pi’s are being bought at their usual low retail price and resold on Amazon, e-bay, etc. at an inflated price. It’s not Raspberry Pi Foundation’s greed; It’s a bunch of scummy *cuss words deleted* scalpers taking advantage of a component shortage. That said, I’m kind of glad the component shortage landed me here. I’ve been daily driving GNU/Linux for years, and this device has taught me more about the os in a few weeks.
I was going to put a joke about AI’s and Neuromancer or Ghost in the Shell here, but I sadly can’t think of one right now. I’ll get back to you on that.
Servos, at least the SG90’s I’ve used, also run off pwm signals. I just cut off the JST and replace it with female Dupont connectors. If you need more pwm’s you could outsource tasks to a separate micro controller.
You could probably update code easier by swapping the SD card.
If you are battery powered, you’re better off with a Microcontroller unless you want to have a very short battery life. You need a pretty big battery to last a day or more.
