Monday, April 17, 2017

Servo Calibration in Robo4J

In this blog I will show how to do simple servo calibration in Robo4J. This is, for example, important to get the laser rangefinder to work properly.

First of all we will need to configure two servo units. In our case we will use an Adafruit 16CH 12-bit PWM generator, but any RoboUnit taking a float value (normally normalized, between -1 and 1) can be used.

First sync your robo4j git repo and build everything:
git pull
./gradlew build
Next set up a classpath variable you can use. Normally just running the environment.sh script for the RaspberryPi will be fine. If not, edit the script to fit your setup.
source scripts/rpi/environment.sh
First off, copy the settings file for the calibration test. It is located in $ROBO4J_HOME/robo4j-units-rpi/src/examples/resources/calibration.xml.
For example:
cp $ROBO4J_HOME/robo4j-units-rpi/src/examples/resources/calibration.xml /tmp
Next edit the file to suit your setup. If you are about to calibrate your laser scanner, make sure that your pan servo is represented in the file. Also set all trim values to 0, and any inverted values to false. Next run the little calibration utility:
sudo java -cp $ROBO4J_PATH com.robo4j.units.rpi.pwm.CalibrationUtility /tmp/calibration.xml
You should now see something like this:

State before start:
RoboSystem state Uninitialized
================================================
  pan Initialized
  tilt Initialized

State after start:
RoboSystem state Started
================================================
  pan Started
  tilt Started


Type the servo to control and how much to move the servo, between -1 and 1. For example:
pan -1.0
Type q and enter to quit!

This is pretty self explanatory. Simply refer to the servo by name, and then set the value for it. If the servo name is “pan” in the configuration file, “pan -1.0” followed by enter will move the servo to one extreme.

For pan servos for the laser rangefinder -1 should be full left, and 1 full right. Ensure that this is the case, if not, change the inverted value for the servo configuration in the settings file. Next set the servo to 0. If the servo is off center when set to 0, carefully unscrew the servo arm without changing the position of the servo arm. Then re-attach it as close to centered as possible.

For the final tuning, use the trim value in the servo configuration to ensure that the servo is properly centered. If you are going to use the servo for panning a laser, also make note of how many degrees rotation of the arm a move from the center (0) to an extreme (-1 or 1) corresponds to.

That’s it! When you are coding/setting up your robot, simply use the settings in you calibration settings file.

Summary

This blog showed how to go about calibrating a servo in Robo4J using the very simple CalibrationUtility. This is an especially important step when the servo will be used together with the LaserScanner, something I will talk about in a future post.