Tag Archives: Zumo

Zumo 32U4 Synchronize Motor

I received a recent question on how to make the Zumo drive straight.  There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest way is to synchronize the motors.  In this post, I’ll briefly discuss a simple method to … Continue reading

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Motor Regulation: Part 2 – Using a P-Controller to Regulate Rotational Velocity

In the last post, we calculated the rotational velocity of the motor.  In this post, we will begin applying feedback to regulate the motor rotational velocity with a simple P-controller.  Like line following, a P, or proportional, feedback method is … Continue reading

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Motor Regulation: Part 1 – Calculate Rotational Velocity

The next several posts are going to deal with writing functions for regulated motor blocks.  So far, everything shown in this blog for the Zumo uses unregulated motors.  At some point, having regulated and synchronized motors will be necessary for … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 – Using the Buttons the Select a Start Move

This post discusses one way to handle setting up the Zumo to perform one of three initial moves prior to entering the main body of the program.  If you go back a couple of posts, we discussed the simple state … Continue reading

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Read Data from the VL53L0X ToF Sensor Mounted on the Zumo 32U4

In this post, we will write a short program to read the data from the VL53L0X and display the data to the Serial Monitor.  As usual, we will need the Zumo32U4 library, but we will also need the I2C library … Continue reading

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Attaching a VL53L0X Breakout Board to Zumo for Accurate Range Finding

The IR sensors on the Zumo 32U4 left us wanting with a desire for a lot more range.  We came across the VL53L0X Time-of-Flight range finding module.  The VL53L0X is capable of up to 2 m range with mm level … Continue reading

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Simplified Sumo State Machine for Zumo

This post will talk about a simple state machine that could be used for robot sumo.  The target here is the Robofest Senior BottleSumo rules, so the state machine is adapted for long searching on large tables.  If you want … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 Unregulated, Unsynchronized Motor Steer Block

This post brings us back to motion and navigation.  One of the goals was to make the Zumo behave a bit more like a LEGO EV3.  The EV3 has these very useful MoveSteer block.  While this seems like a very … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 Sensor Read Times

Last post had the Zumo rotate and face a target.  I’ve been working on driving towards the target in an attempt to push it off of a table like done in Sumo competitions with great success with the rare occasion … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 – Using the Proximity Sensors to Point Towards the Closest Object

Assuming you want to use the cute little Zumo for a Robot Sumo competition, you need to make the Zumo turn in the direction of the highest proximity.  This may be a competing robot, or in the case of Robofest … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 – Squaring to an Edge or Line

This post talks about a common step for any robotics competition, namely, squaring the robot to a line or an edge.  This builds off of previous post where you worked on having the robot drive to an edge.  The program … Continue reading

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Display of the Zumo IR and Light Sensors on the Serial Monitor

In this post, we are going to measure both the downward facing light sensors and the proximity sensors, and display their data.  The previous several posts discussed the reading of the light and proximity sensors, so we will not spend … Continue reading

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Reading the Zumo 32U4 Proximity Sensors

There are three IR proximity sensors on the Zumo.  All of them are on the lower sensor board that contains the downward facing light sensors.  In addition to the sensors, there are four IR emitters.  There are two front IR … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 Drive to Edge

This post discusses a common issue with any sumo event or competition that involves navigating to a line.  Our goal with this post is simply to drive the robot placed on a light colored surface until it reaches a dark … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 Downward Light Sensors, Part 2 – Calibration

This post will discuss how to calibrate the downward facing light sensors, and to read the calibrated values.  I went a little over the top on the calibration function, but it makes it that much nicer.  You can certainly do … Continue reading

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Reading the Zumo 32U4 Downward Facing Light Sensors, Part 1

The Zumo 32U4 has 5 downward facing light sensors on the front light sensor array.  The light sensor array board also has 3 IR sensors used for proximity sensors or IR receivers for remote control.  However, two of the light … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 Simple LCD Display Test

I realized that before we can work on reading the light sensors, we probably should cover an easy way to display the data.  There are a couple of ways to display data on the Zumo.  One, which we will cover … Continue reading

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Zumo 32U4 Motor Encoders

In the previous post, we walked through how to turn the motors on for a specific amount of time.  In this post, we will turn the motors on for a specific amount of encoder pulses.  Like the EV3, encoders count … Continue reading

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Zumo Simple Driving Program

These blog posts on the Zumo will start out very simple.  This is assuming the reader has little to no Arduino experience.  The goal of this post is simply to teach the reader how to write a program that will … Continue reading

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