Create a streetcar with Lego Mindstorms components and a Raspberry Pi
Node-RED Automatic Control
We found the automatic control logic to be a little trickier than the manual logic. Our first step was to see if we could read the Lego Mindstorms touch sensors, so we connected an Explorer HAT input node to a debug node (Figure 7), manually pushed each touch sensor, and clicked the debug tab to check the results.
Figure 7: Reading the output of the touch sensors.
To catch when the streetcar hits the touch sensor at station 1, we needed to create a function (Figure 8) that looked at the topic explorerhat/input.1. If this topic's payload is 1 (i.e., touched), then the Explorer HAT motor can be stopped by sending a message with the topic motor.one and payload = 0. A similar function is created for the touch sensor at station 2, except the topic explorerhat/input.2 is monitored.
Figure 8: Function to stop the streetcar at station 1.
After the streetcar hits a touch sensor, we want it to pause and then move in the opposite direction. A delay node was used for the pause, followed by a function node to send a message payload with the new speed and direction (Figure 9). For this project, station 1 restarted with a speed of -70, and station 2 restarted with a speed of 70 (i.e., +70). The complete logic with both manual and automatic control is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 9: Function to reverse the direction of the streetcar at station 1.
Figure 10: Full streetcar logic.
Summary
The combination of Lego Mindstorms components, the Explorer HAT Pro, Node-RED, and a Raspberry Pi can be the starting point for many interesting projects. Here, we created a streetcar that runs its route automatically, but also allows manual intervention – such as for those ubiquitous summer street repair projects.
Some future ideas for this project are:
- writing the code in Python
- adding a speed adjustment
- creating an elevator instead of a streetcar
Infos
- Lego Mindstorms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms
- Dexter Industries breadboard adapter: https://www.amazon.com/Breadboard-Adapter-for-LEGO-MINDSTORMS/dp/B00A0P5FY6/
- Explorer HAT Pro: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/explorer-hat
- Node-RED library: http://flows.nodered.org
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