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Internet of Grabby Things

An internet connected toy arcade grabbing machine. Created at a Raspberry Pi hackday in Leeds 2012.

chrisChris
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An old discarded toy, dismantled, rewired, modified, rebuilt and connected to give it new life!

Using a Raspberry Pi to control a toy arcade grabbing machine through a webpage with webcam display.

mjpg-streamer

script to start mjpeg-streamer

mjpg-streamer - 790.00 bytes - 11/05/2016 at 10:20

Download

jquery.js

Jquery library

javascript - 92.62 kB - 11/05/2016 at 10:06

Download

webiopi.js

JavaScript for sending commands to control the grabber

javascript - 14.08 kB - 11/05/2016 at 10:06

Download

grabber.html

Buttons to control the grabber

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) - 3.12 kB - 11/05/2016 at 10:06

Download

webiopi.css

Style sheet for webpage

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - 1.03 kB - 11/05/2016 at 10:06

Download

View all 6 files

  • 1 × Raspberry Pi any raspberry Pi
  • 1 × LM293 Motor control ic
  • 3 × Relay double thorw double pole 5V relay
  • 5 × bc547 or any similar transitor
  • 7 × Resitors Various values

View all 7 components

  • Startup

    Chris • 11/05/2016 at 10:51 • 0 comments

    First create a init script for mjpg-streamer. create a file and use the script attached to the project page

    sudo nano /etc/init.d/mjpg-streamer

    or copy from a usb stick..

    sudo cp -R /mnt/sda1/mjpg-streamer /etc/init.d

    change permissions of the script

    sudo chmod 0755 /etc/init.d/mjpg-streamer

    to control the processes manually:

    sudo /etc/init.d/webiopi <start | stop | force-reload | status >

    sudo /etc/init.d/mjpg-streamer <start | stop >

    or add scripts for start on boot

    sudo update-rc.d webiopi defaults

    sudo update-rc.d mjpg-streamer defaults

    *note: there is currently a bug with webiopi that means you won't see the controls from boot. you need to force a reload.

    sudo /etc/init.d/webiopi force-reload

    to access the page using the default port go to

    <ip address>:8000/index.html

  • Web Page

    Chris • 11/05/2016 at 10:49 • 0 comments

    The web page is split into three parts: A title bar displaying the makerspace logo; a web cam stream and a control panel. To make the webpage quickly I've used frames, so it may not look too good on all browsers etc. The logo image and index.html need to be in the folder /var/www. this is because the image is server up using apache2 and the rest is done by webiopi.

    sudo cp -R /mnt/sda1/apache/index.html /var/www

    sudo cp -R /mnt/sda1/apache/makerspace.png /var/www

    Copy the web page to /usr/share/webiopi/htdocs

    sudo cp -R /mnt/sda1/htdocs/ /usr/share/webiopi/htdocs/

    The index.html in htdocs must be edited with the IP address of the Pi you are using. Port forwarding could be set up to view this webpage in the wild.

    Webiopi Control Panel

    The code required to display the Control Panel buttons and control the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pin states is written in an HTML page using JavaScript and CSS. The '/webiopi.js' (the Webiopi client library script) is included in the <head> section along with the custom script to create the buttons and their behaviour, and the CSS that defines the button and text colours and dimensions. The Control Panel HTML that is generated from the JavaScript is appended to a <div> tag with an ID named 'content', and this <div> tag is placed in the <body> section of the page. The <div> tag remains empty until the page is loaded on the client web browser. When the client loads the page, the HTML content is loaded dynamically via the JavaScript instructions.

    We based our initial Control Panel design from the rather succinct but comprehensive example on the Webiopi wiki.

    Following on from this, we were able to customise the functionality to suit our own purpose by using the sensibly laid-out Webiopi JavaScript and CSS references.

    ...and we finally ended up with the HTML for the Control Panel

    All of the files required are attached to the project page.

  • Software

    Chris • 11/05/2016 at 10:42 • 0 comments

    This needs 3 packages, WebIOPi, mjpg-streamer and Apache, then a webpage creating and the start-up configuration. The WebIOPi handles the interface from the website to the gpio of the Raspberry Pi, the mjpg-streamer takes the stream from the webcam or Raspberry Pi camera and sends it to the webpage and Apache runs the webpage itself.

    From the raspbian image

    Install webiopi:

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get -y install python3-dev

    wget http://webiopi.googlecode.com/files/WebIOPi-0.5.1.tar.gz

    tar xvzf WebIOPi-0.5.1.tar.gz

    cd WebIOPi-0.5.1

    sudo ./setup.sh

    Install subversion - This is needed to allow you to get the source for mjpg-streamer

    sudo apt-get -y install subversion

    Install mjpg-streamer

    cd

    svn co https://mjpg-streamer.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mjpg-streamer mjpg-streamer

    sudo apt-get -y install libjpeg8-dev imagemagick

    cd mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer

    make

    move to usr/lib/mjpg-streamer

    sudo cp -R /home/pi/mjpg-streamer/ /usr/lib/

    Install Apache2 - This is used to help serve the webpage. To install simply:

    sudo apt-get -y install apache2

  • Hardware

    Chris • 11/05/2016 at 10:33 • 0 comments

    The original toy had 2 motors to control the gantry and a third to control the height of the grabbing claw. The gantry had limit switches on each of the sides. this was al controlled by three switches mounted on the front panel of the toy.

    To interface the Raspberry Pi to this grabber machine, we need to control these three motors and use the 4 limit switches to move the gantry.WeI've used a L293 driver ic with 1 relay for each axis to switch over the limit switches for the gantry and a relay and transistor to control the grabber movement and direction. I could have used another L293 to do this, but I only had the one. The relays are all driven by transistors, some BC547s.

    The limit switches were wired in series with the motors, these were swapped over by the relays depending on the direction of travel.

View all 4 project logs

  • 1
    Step 1

    Gather all of the components on the project page

  • 2
    Step 2

    Solder up or bread board the circuit in the Hardware log.

  • 3
    Step 3

    Install all the software described in the Software log

View all 6 instructions

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