Among the things we are actively exploring at Rocket City Dynamics Tech Blog is the JPL Rover project. Mike Broome is the owner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-broome/) here in Huntsville. (No affiliation with NASA. This project has been handed off to the enthusiasts, but started as an educational project with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.)

We teamed up on this to grow ourselves and our careers a few years ago right before the pandemic. Mike got it assembled, but needed tech support help with the electronics and diagnostics at the time. This project provided the spark for Rocket City Dynamics. It is a good test bed in its current state, but far from industrial strength. That is good for keeping our expectations in check. It serves as a test bench for hardware, software, and design. It is a good teaching tool for low voltage, Linux, and telemetry. This allowed our career growth during and after the pandemic, basically.

I worked heavily on tooling and diagnostics while Mike pursued his Engineering Degree. We both have business backgrounds, too. Chasing parts through the supply chain, organizing technical documentation, and establishing workable toolchains for development have been some of the work behind the scenes to get this to come to fruition. We study and construct our means to deliver a finished product.

Total investment to date has been about $2500. This is more expensive and complex than a middle school science project, and is geared towards grads and career focused tinkerers.

This is the Rocket City Dynamics Github repo fork if you would like to view or contribute on this specific project here locally. We aim to use this to communicate with our local engineering talent both young and old, primarily with college grads and up.

https://github.com/RocketCityDynamics/open-source-rover

Forked from: https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover

Here is the Youtube playlist submitted to us from another enthusiast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a8BNGDF2o8\&list=PL-dJL4bcwISmuYGlL0bc3X0Z4PCKSFg7Z

This rover is based on RevF, or version 1. It is mostly a stock build but with a few updates along the way. Chiefly, there is a single motherboard update from the v2 for better voltage stability, reliability, and ease of maintenance. There is not currently enough power onboard to run a 7in screen reliably, but a smaller diagnostic interface onboard is workable. When working on the Pi3B+, you can still reach the HDMI port on the side. You can also set up SSH and remote into it like any other IoT device on your network.

The 5 stock Roboclaw boards are 2x7A, but are now superceded by a new part number. They should work the same.

https://www.pololu.com/product/3682

Version 2 uses stronger motors all around and can handle more of a beating like an RC car. The cost to upgrade to the newer motors over the RevF V1 is about $450.

In the coming months we’ll get this finished and driveable remotely, so please stay tuned.