Electronics System Diagram:
- Jetson Nano: This $99 SBC will allow us to collect images from the camera, run computer vision code and control the motors. The reason we are using a Jetson Nano is because it gives us enough computing power to process the images fast enough to smoothly track the target.
- Battery and Power Management: We will be using a power tool battery because it makes it a lot easier and safer than working with lipo batteries directly. Modern power tool batteries have built in battery protection circuitry. Not having to make our own battery protection circuitry allows us to focus on all the other aspects of the project. To be able to use a power tool battery we will likely have to replicate the communication between the battery and the power tool. To do this we plan on spoofing this communication and then replicating with a very simply microcontroller system. The voltage coming out of the battery will then have to be regulated to power the Jetson and the motor driver. Some simple voltage regulator circuits should allow us to do this with ease.
- Motors and Motor Drivers: We plan on using servo motors because they are very simple to work with and still give us the precision necessary to properly track a target. We have found several servo motors that should be able to satisfy our needs and will be selecting some soon. The motor driver will likely be a simple logic level shifter that will allow the Jetson to control the servo motors through GPIO pins. One design decision that we are still considering is if the voltage regulator for the motors should be its own module or integrated into the motor driver. We won’t know what the motor driver voltage is until we choose the servos. The motor driver voltage regulator should be regulatable so we can test performance at different voltages within the servo motors operating range.
- Camera: We will be using a ribbon cable camera module. The specific module hasn’t been selected but we know it must be compatible with the Jetson CSI camera connector. We will be aiming for a fairly high resolution camera because we intend on doing recordings from this system and want high quality footage.
- Wifi and Bluetooth: The Jetson has a Bluetooth And Wifi add on module. It should be pretty straight forward working with this module but it is a key component for the system.
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