Building a warehouse robot.

Building a warehouse robot

A COVID-19 project using (amongst others) the following tools and techniques:
Arduino, Esp32 MicroPython, custom made electronics, fischertechnik, OpenSCAD, 3D-printing, KiCad and more…

I have always been interested in the combination of mechanics, electronics, and software development. My main goal is to learn new things (like MicroPython and KiCad) and to share my experience and project findings with you.

As a software developer, I have professionally programmed systems that control theater systems, doors, pharmacy robots, and more. As a hobby I am playing and building things with fischertechnik for more than 40 years now. I even started 3D-printing so I could print my own custom fischertechnik parts.

Part one: The Sensemakers esp pcb.

Gijs Mos from the Sensemakers community in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and I have created a PCB to mount an ESP8266like Wemos-D1 or an ESP32 like TTGO-T7, with for the ESP32, more than 20 IO lines. This board provides grove connectors for I2C (4) and GPIO signals (9). It also provides a connector to chain multiple boards together. And we have made a mounting board for a the TTGO-T4 (https://github.com/LilyGO/TTGO-T4-DEMO) ESP32 with display. This board will be used by Sensemakers to provide MicroPython and Arduino workshops. Before I created this board, I followed the online course “KiCad like a pro”, to learn what it takes to create a PCB from start till end. This board has been created in Kiad and is available as non-commercial open source at https://github.com/Karijn/sensemakers-esp32. The version below is a 4-layer version manufactured by JLCPCB.