MultiRoombaRover/plans/outline.md

multi roomba rover

a website where people can control multiple irobot create 2 robots in real time 100% responsively with a raspberry pi zero 2 W on each roomba, along with a raspberry pi camera a central nodejs control server will tell the raspberry pis what to do with the roomba

the pi side (roomba side)

• pi's onboard UART is hooked up to the roomba's serial port
• another GPIO pin connected to the roomba's BRC pin
  • pull it low for one second every minute to keep the roomba awake
• streams the rpi camera over webRTC with mediamtx
• streams roomba sensor group 100 to the server
  • sensor streaming is required and important, but is allowed to falter sometimes
• listens for roomba commands from the server
  • commands NEED to happen
• roomba control program needs to be simple, lightweight, and 100% responsive

pi -> server communication

• stateless
• streaming based
• on connection, the pi will send the following info:
  • rover's name
  • motor enable / disable
    • vacuum
    • main brush
    • side brush
  • battery full number
  • battery warning number
  • battery urgent number

nodejs server

• KISS
• decode the sensor data from each roomba
• can support multiple roombas connected from the ground up
• keep it simple, worry about getting the pi comms right.
  • but the server DOES have to exist for testing
• IS the web server, hosts an entire static folder for the web UI

server -> web UI communication

• socket.io
• don't do anything fancy with the socket.io setup
  • it works fine out of the box, we will optimize it later

the web UI

• KISS
• plain old html. no styling even. just bare minimum for testing
• what it needs to do:
  • allow user to select the roomba from a list
  • make the selected roomba drive with WASD
  • have buttons to set the OI mode, and tell the roomba to dock
  • show a plain list of the sensor data from the selected roomba

general javascript programming guidelines (applies to the web UI too)

• everything ES6
  • one entrypoint file in the web UI
• everything modular
• everything easy to read, understand, and work on
• comment where you think is best to describe whats going on