BeagleBone Robotic Projects: Developer or hobbyist, you'll love the way this book helps you turn the BeagleBone Black into a working robot. From listening and speaking to seeing and moving, we'll show you how ‚Äì step by step.

Richard Grimmett

€37.99

4 (13 Ratings)

Paperback Dec 2013 244 pages 1st Edition

Richard Grimmett

€37.99

4 (13 Ratings)

Paperback Dec 2013 244 pages 1st Edition

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Key benefits

Get to grips with robotic systems.
Communicate with your robot and teach it to detect and respond to its environment.
Develop walking, rolling, swimming, and flying robots.

Description

Thanks to new, inexpensive microcontrollers, robotics has become far more accessible than it was in the past. These microcontrollers provide a whole new set of capabilities to allow even the most inexperienced users to make amazingly complicated projects. Beaglebone is effectively a small, light, cheap computer in a similar vein to Raspberry Pi and Arduino. It has all of the extensibility of today's desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise. This project guide provides step-by-step instructions to allow anyone to use this new, low cost platform in some fascinating robotics projects. By the time you are finished, your projects will be able to see, speak, listen, detect their surroundings, and move in a variety of amazing ways. The book begins with unpacking and powering up the components.This will include guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully‚Äìand a primer on programming the BeagleBone Black. Chapter by chapter, we will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including how to make the system see using a webcam, how to hear using a microphone, and how to speak using a speaker. We then add hardware to make your robots move‚Äìincluding wheeled and legged examples‚Äìas well as covering how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects, plus wireless control to make your robot truly autonomous. Adding GPS allows the robot to find itself. Finally the book covers how to integrate all of this functionality so that it can all work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: those that can sail, fly, and explore underwater.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone who is curious about using new, low-cost hardware to create robotic projects that have previously been the domain of research labs, major universities or Defence departments. Some programming experience would be useful, but if you know how to use a personal computer, you can use this book to construct far more complex systems than you would have thought possible.

What you will learn

Unbox, power up, and configure the BeagleBone black with Ubuntu.
Install speech recognition software to issue voice commands to your projects.
Set up a webcam and a computer vision toolkit for distinguishing objects.
Communicate with external motors to enable you robotics projects to move in a variety of ways.
Process audio signals like music or other sounds.
Add GPS capability to your system so it will know where it is.
Use the building blocks you have learned to create complex robotic projects that can combine all of these features and more.

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Building a Home Security System with BeagleBone

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Amazon verified reviews

Tom Hall Jan 26, 2014

"This book is designed for the informed beginner." is a quote from the author. I think it pretty accurately describes where I am with the Beaglebone Black. Actually, it is not too far from where I am with Linux as well.The book title suggests that it is for those who have an interest in robotics. I didn't have any interest in robotics when I started, but I do now. I just ordered a Sparkfun 2 wheeled robot platform and a couple of Pololu motor controllers with the intend of building a few of the projects that i didn't have the parts for.The Beaglebone Black can be frustrating - an Arduino clone it is not. But, it is a complete Linux 1Ghz computer with a lot of I/O. The default Angstrom distribution is not as close to being as stable as the Debian Wheezy distruibution supplied with the Raspberry Pi. (As of the time of this review the BBB is likely to get a default Debian distribution very soon.) Mr. Grimmett overcomes this by having you load an Ubuntu distribution on a sd card and boot from it instead. I used a 16GB card and have room to spare after reading the instructions on how to reclaim the unused space on page 89.I liked this book. It was almost a perfect fit for me. I knew the BBB could do lots of things but never really had any luck with some of the online tutorials that I tried. Because of the book I got my USB camera to work, showing video via OpenCV. With one of those cheapie USB sound cards and a Logitech headset I was able to record and play sounds via the ALSA library. I even tried a little speech recognition. This book is very good at showcasing the BBB's built in capabilities and actually getting them to work. If you are really interested, Mr. Grimmett will also show you how you can operate your Beaglebone Black by land, by air or by sea(above and beneath).The book covers programming with Python but is by no means a tutorial on the subject. That statement is pretty much true for robotics as well. Most of the robotics are made of simple to use USB type controllers for motors and servos and other sensors. Simple to use doesn't mean cheap! There is no doubt other ways of skinning this cat but I believe the author would have caused himself no end of grief by trying to describe a cheaper, more "solder it yourself" type of construction. To be honest, I had no idea you could build a robot by plugging in a bunch of controllers into a powered USB hub.So, should you buy this book? Well, if you're an "informed beginner", by all means. I found it a lot of fun - not only getting my Beaglebone Black to do something but giving me more much needed confidence with Linux. I am also looking forward to the day my robot parts arrive. There is a lot to get from this book.

Amazon Verified review

Mbelalco Dec 31, 2014

Good

Joseph G Hafner May 03, 2014

Most robotics books stop at the point of hooking up sensors and servos on a wheeled platform, and demonstrate obstacle avoidance. With power of the BeagleBone Black available, this book starts with teaching your platform to speak, hear, and see, then become mobile. Then we explore multiple types of platforms including aerial and waterborne. What fun! Very nicely done.

CNC guy Feb 03, 2014

First ImpressionsDisclaimer: I recognized the author of this book as a frequent participant in the BeagleBoard mailing list. Packt Publishing provided me with a copy of this book so that I could do this book review.I liked this book almost immediately. The mission oriented chapter organization is good. Explanations are clear and concise. Good references are given for most topics if you want to get more in depth than what is covered in the book.What the book coversThe book is organized in 11 chapters. The first chapter has a nice getting started with the BeagleBone Black (BBB). Chapter 2 briefly covers programming the BBB in Python with an even shorter intro to C++. In the third chapter things start to get good with an introduction to adding speech and speech recognition to the BBB.The fourth chapter tells you how to connect a USB camera to the BBB. It also covers using the OpenCV framework for pattern recognition and object tracking. Chapters 5 and 6 let you take your BBB mobile by adding wheels, tracks, and legs.Chapter 7 covers adding sensors to keep your robots out of trouble. The eighth chapter concerns remote control of your robots. Chapter 9 is about letting your BBB find itself with GPS guidance.Chapter 10 tries to bring all the pieces together with a discussion of system dynamics. The final chapter discusses air and water vehicles for those not content to stay on the ground.My favorite partsI liked seeing the use of a full editor, emacs in the opening chapter. It seems that everyone is using a light editor like nano for books and presentations. This book covers many aspects that must be considered in any real world robotics project. For some reason, I thought the sailboat presented in the last chapter was particularly neat. It is also good to see people really making use of the BBB hardware and not just blinking LEDs.The part I'm on the fence aboutThe book uses USB devices exclusively. On the one hand, this allows you to easily connect devices without doing any real wiring. It also allows you to focus on the functionality and less on the interface. On the other hand, this requires the use of a powered USB hub. The BBB has 92 pins on its expansion headers. It seems a shame to let all this I/O go to waste while funneling all the traffic through USB.My wish listAs I said, I really liked this book. There are two things I would have liked to see in this book. While the exclusive use of USB devices is probably OK for the book. It would have been nice to have some coverage of using the BBB expansion headers as well. This would help readers who want to take things to the next level after reading the book.My second item would be a complete robot project. I realize this is a tall order. All the pieces you need to build a robot are in the book. A complete robot might encourage readers to actually build something instead of just reading about it.[...]

DS Jan 27, 2014

Truly a gem for anyone interested in robotics projects using BeagleBone. This book has saved me uncountable hours of research into common challenges for robotics projects using this SBC. I highly recommend it.

BeagleBone Robotic Projects: Developer or hobbyist, you'll love the way this book helps you turn the BeagleBone Black into a working robot. From listening and speaking to seeing and moving, we'll show you how ‚Äì step by step.

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