Pico W Rover Project

Background

From my earliest memories, the fascinating world of robotics has always held a special allure for me. The idea of crafting a fully-functional rover, however, has often felt like an endeavor of astronomical proportions. This blog serves as my digital diary, chronicling my journey as I navigate the intricate process of bringing a rover to life

Tooling

Hardware

• Pico W
• Pico Debug Probe

Software

• Pico CPP sdk
• FreeRTOS library
• CMake

Setup

I followed the RPI Pico Windows Installer guide to setup my enviornment properly.

Reasonings

This project is designed in its current form to facilitate my learning process, allowing me to delve into and integrate various technologies that pique my interest. Adopting a hands-on approach, which is arguably the most effective way to learn, will steer the majority of my decisions. I've chosen the Raspberry Pi Pico W as my development board for its dual-core processing capability and built-in WiFi and Bluetooth features. While the current memory capacity should suffice for my planned tasks, I'm open to upgrading if necessary. My intent is to employ a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) library over bare metal programming, providing an opportunity to enhance my skills in using an RTOS.

Code

Link to my GitHub project with the full code can be found here.. I integrated the hello world of hardware (LED blink) with the minimum folder structure to keep my codebase clean for the future.