A mix of Python and Java regarding the software stack.
JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#22if anyone has worked at JPL or similar, what's the best resource for learning how to make an actual Mars/Moon rover?
I'm very curious about things like, what kind of wheels you need for regolith, how to manage extreme temperatures (electronics, motors, batteries, cameras), how communication works (could you have a remotely-operated lunar rover?), dealing with radiation (SpaceX works with consumer electronics AFAIK, but they mostly fly within Earth's magnetosphere, which ... changes things).
Any replies or emails would be extremely appreciated.
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#23This seems really awesome, but my God is it expensive. Maybe I am not reading correctly but it seems like just the nuts and bolts from McMaster cost $230 and that's still excluding the electronics and additional hardware! I guess I'll have to save up a bit before I can play with my own minituare rover. edit: the motors also are going to cost around $500
McMaster is extremely overpriced. Good for just ordering stuff for quick prototypes where you don't need to shop on price, but otherwise, it's easy to end up paying multiple times as much for some item as you would if you found a good OEM supplier for each component (and this isn't even considering Chinese OEM suppliers).
I just recently learned about McMaster and noticed it's overpriced, but I don't know where else one would get all this variety of equipment. Where can I find such OEM suppliers?
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#24Looks more like a toy rover project, rather than "an open source rover project". Hoped they will make open source substantial (even if simplified) part of the rover project, so space startups can reuse and improve it.
The mars rovers run on hardened CPU’s that cost 200k per board, as well as a commercial OS, so creating an open source community around that would be challenging.
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#25It's interesting that the rover code itself is written in python. That makes it more approachable..
import rover
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#26Looks more like a toy rover project, rather than "an open source rover project". Hoped they will make open source substantial (even if simplified) part of the rover project, so space startups can reuse and improve it.
The mars rovers run on hardened CPU’s that cost 200k per board, as well as a commercial OS, so creating an open source community around that would be challenging.
Hardened CPUs shouldn't be a problem, as long as you can also run the code on a normal CPU, or in an emulator.
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#27Looks more like a toy rover project, rather than "an open source rover project". Hoped they will make open source substantial (even if simplified) part of the rover project, so space startups can reuse and improve it.
Why couldn't this be re-used to some degree for a rover in non-Earth with tougher, more resilient hardware?
Because it’s made out of consumer bits and pieces that talk on serial bus with little or no environmental protection (with electronics and sensors distributed in a way that’s probably not practical to do so to the level required).
For non-earth you’d probably just want to start again.
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mars rovers run on hardened CPU’s that cost 200k per board, as well as a commercial OS, so creating an open source community around that would be challenging.
Hardened CPUs shouldn't be a problem, as long as you can also run the code on a normal CPU, or in an emulator.
having a 15 year old mac as a requirement is probably not the best
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#29This seems really awesome, but my God is it expensive. Maybe I am not reading correctly but it seems like just the nuts and bolts from McMaster cost $230 and that's still excluding the electronics and additional hardware! I guess I'll have to save up a bit before I can play with my own minituare rover. edit: the motors also are going to cost around $500
Regarding the motors, they wouldn't be suitable for this particular project but you can buy broken hoverboards really cheaply. Where I live you can get stripped ones (no battery, no logic board, but you can get hoverboard logic boards on AliExpress for under 20€) for 10€ and returned ones (99% of the time it's a dead battery) for 35€. The motors are fantastic and powerful (~350W each), and you can build lots of stuff with them. There's a great talk on how to use these things to build all kinds of moving objects (armchairs, bobbycars, motorised cargo carriers: https://twitter.com/JanHenrikH/status/1023218344282021888, ...) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnQSL9DBPaE. You can motorise anything this way for around 100€. The only thing that's hard to come by cheaply is the battery.
Re: JPL Open-Source Rover Project Based on the Rovers on Mars
#30This seems really awesome, but my God is it expensive. Maybe I am not reading correctly but it seems like just the nuts and bolts from McMaster cost $230 and that's still excluding the electronics and additional hardware! I guess I'll have to save up a bit before I can play with my own minituare rover. edit: the motors also are going to cost around $500
Regarding the motors, they wouldn't be suitable for this particular project but you can buy broken hoverboards really cheaply. Where I live you can get stripped ones (no battery, no logic board, but you can get hoverboard logic boards on AliExpress for under 20€) for 10€ and returned ones (99% of the time it's a dead battery) for 35€. The motors are fantastic and powerful (~350W each), and you can build lots of stuff…
> The only thing that's hard to come by cheaply is the battery.
Dead laptop and power tool battery packs usually have at least some useable 18650 cells in them. A friend has built more than one battery pack for electric scooter out of harvested cells.
You do have to know what you're doing when working with unprotected cells though.