raspberry pi aliens motion tracker

martinr1000

martinr1000

Active Member
Here are some pictures of my build. first there are all of the electronics crammed into the Hama viewer (Note I've followed the hyperdyne labs motion tracker build guide to assemble the prop before this. http://www.hyperdynelabs.com/mt/construct/ )​

hama viewer.jpgelectronics.jpg

next we have the speaker that I've put into the main body of the kango drill​

speaker.jpg

I control the addition of tracker blips with the original kango drill trigger​

kango switch.jpg

and i control power to the raspberry pi with a switch fitted into the jobo minilight on top of the tracker​

switch back.jpgswitch board.jpgswitch insert.jpg

I think that next time i will house the electronics in the kango drill as this will allow me to use a bigger powerbank. the current lipo cell lasts about 30-40 minutes before it dies.​

electronics.jpg


hama viewer.jpg


speaker.jpg


kango switch.jpg


switch back.jpg


switch board.jpg


switch insert.jpg
 
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Raspberry pi's take a while to boot up. What is the boot up time on yours ? Were you able to speed it up at all ?
 
Takes about a minute before the weyland yutani screen. Can't really speed it up but i could add a boot splash screen or movie so that its not all black.
 
That's cool. :)
Would it be possible to put a compass in there and rotate the display as you move it around?

BTW. The attachments don't work.
 
Darth Lars said:
That's cool. :)
Would it be possible to put a compass in there and rotate the display as you move it around?

it's already in there but doesn't work too well. It's either sh*tty code or i need a tilt compensated compass.

BTW. The attachments don't work.
Click to expand...

I've re-uploaded them so hopefully you can see them
 
Bringing this one back out from under the bed. I have started doing this project now myself as I have had the electronics lying around for long enough without any luck. I was trying to replicate Ian Bremners but it wasn't working out and there was little support which is fine. I am hoping to have better luck here and am looking forward to it finally coming to life.
 
so I found another guy who is working on your project as well after ditching Ians. we have been talking on a discord I made up. let me know if you wanna stop in on it just to see what people are doing with yours. He has done some great work making it work to date
 
wow it's been a while since i looked at this thread. I should say that in the end i ditched the idea of housing everything in the hama display box. In the end i put the pi, speaker and compass in the main body of the kango drill along with a small power brick that i was able to wire up with a female usb extension cable that means i can charge the unit externally.

Glad to hear you are making progress with other members and i'm sorry that i couldn't help you more. I am just too busy with work at the moment to commit to anything else. Look forward to seeing your progress.

cheers
 
Hello. I have 2 trackers at the moment all real parts, but have made 12 in total over a few years all with real parts. And have jumped back on this project after giving up a long time ago............ But back now. I’m struggling to get a few things working one is the compass moving. There is no real instructions from what I could find to get it working. Hopefully I can help others and you can help me. I have used other raspberry pi’s before in the other trackers I built but i went down the video loops because it was more like the way the film prop would have worked.
here is a link of my original ones on YouTube.

What im using today for my build this time.

Raspberry pi 3 a+
Buster OS.
2.4 inch TFT composite type.
max98357 12s amp and speaker.
Compass.
Bluetooth keyboard + dongle.
Battery pack. charges via kango port.
Everything installed inside the KANGO apart from the screen thats in the viewer.

A few images.

16487903_10154791995809845_5305783455338680779_o.jpg

Have had a few trackers at one point. Including the mater replica version.

52368397_10156630474094845_1766414225145593856_n.jpg

Charging port for internal battery.

8F11CF51-4486-4F87-BC6B-F2A5C5C59EE8.jpeg

ON/OFF switch

EF5A141B-1CD5-4DAD-AC41-108D92320073.jpeg

Use of the flash units original switches to trigger things like radio chatter. And i can turn the lcd screen on/off separately, working leds in there to.

D85650F7-F261-47CB-8A2F-67914BBE7E7C.jpeg

Speaker location.
 
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Sorry about bringing this back from the dead, but I'm in the middle of this build now and am having some issues.

Pi Zero W
Jessie OS (Got this to minimize code conflicts)
Compass
2" Composite TFT Screen (this differs from the original build.)
Adafruit Speaker Bonnet (had one of these hanging around I think it's overkill)

I've been trying to follow the guide on github
github.com

GitHub - martinr1000/AliensMotionTracker: an aliens inspired motion tracker application written in python for raspberry pi inputs

an aliens inspired motion tracker application written in python for raspberry pi inputs - martinr1000/AliensMotionTracker
github.com github.com

So far I've been able to tweak the code to output to the composite video instead of the TFT panel specified in the doc, but when the script runs it looks like it's about half the size it should be. Any attempt to fake a larger resolution just puts the graphics off to the side and still at the wrong scale.

IMG_3630.jpg


Any suggestions from anyone who has completed this?

Thanks!
 
I just changed the settings in the config.txt. Did take a bit of time to get them correct but worked for me.
Change the overscan section.
 
corsasri said:
I just changed the settings in the config.txt. Did take a bit of time to get them correct but worked for me.
Change the overscan
Click to expand...
I've played around with just about every setting in there. I feel like I'm missing something obvious. While my Python skills stop at knowing the language exists, I'm no stranger to working with RPi, which is making me feel all the worse that I can't figure this out.

The screen looks perfect when it posts and when I had the desktop UI still loading. It's only when the Python pyscope object loads does it display at 1/2 the resolution that it should.

Everything (config.txt and pyscope.py) is set to 320x240 to match what the display's native resolution is. When I have pyscope.py read out what resolution it finds as native, it prints out the correct resolution.

I did have to change some code so it would display at all.
The first errors I was getting were due to the application looking for the TFT drivers and not finding them. I removed those references from the "main.py" file and the code started running but it wasn't displaying anything on the screen. (I knew it was running because I wasn't getting errors and I could hear the motion tracker clicks.)

I then reworked the pyscope.py file to more closely match what Adafruit had as a pyscope demo, which is what got the graphics to finally display in this scaled down form. (From my testing it seems to be the flag "pygame.DOUBLEBUF" that results in a blank screen while the code is executing.)

No amount of fiddling with the native resolution / scaling in either the config.txt file or the pyscope.py file have scaled up what's being displayed.

corsasri, your comment makes me feel even more like I've gone down a rabbit hole needlessly and that the code should work with a composite out without any tweaking. Care to share some old code with me?

Thanks!
 
I use a composite screen via the rpi 3.5 jack. And I got the screen set by adjusting the overscan settings. Pm me your email. I will send over my setting.
 
I am an idiot.

I was trying to run the auto-start feature through the "rc.local" file because I didn't want to start the RBi desktop UI.

I went back, RTFM, set up autostart via "~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart" (which has been moved to "/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart" in Buster) and now everything runs full screen after the desktop launches.

The only code I needed to change was the GPIO pin used by the button. I think it's using 20 and since the Adafruit audio bonnet needs that port, I changed it to 23 in the "main.py" script.

Looks great sounds great, this is an awesome little app.
Now I just need to complete parts collection so I can get to putting this original tracker together.
One Kango drill and one Hama shutter release to go...

Thanks!
 

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