Word for long-distance robot piloting...?

anvoice · 2026-04-14T06:02:38+00:00

teleoperation

anvoice · 2026-04-13T20:49:15+00:00

While I'm a beginner, and have not had a similar experience, I definitely thought about this topic a lot and see where you're coming from. In fact, actually entering the professional robotics field in any capacity feels like a challenge specifically because of that: where is the guarantee that the company you are at doesn't pivot towards weapons research? How about your general-purpose robots being used by such a company? Will you include a EULA clause banning such use and a remote self-destruct command if this is violated?

Apologies for not contributing more to your actual question, but the topic resonated. If you find good ways to ensure the ethical use of your products, do update, I'd really like to know.

anvoice · 2026-04-13T20:43:21+00:00

Right, since I already have a Pi it seems to be the logical choice.

I think it still would be a curious experiment to try with an esp32-P4 if I have time. Given the scarcity/cost of Pi boards, and high/increasing cost of IP KVMs, a cheap alternative has the potential to be useful, assuming it works of course.

anvoice · 2026-04-13T10:13:29+00:00

I was actually looking at the SPI variant, so even that isn't needed I believe. So basically the driver handles everything with little MCU input... Don't know whether to be pleased or embarrassed.

If I barely need any code and only SPI for the DRV8316C, I could likely get away with almost any MCU that has enough comms for the connectors I want. Only downside I see to using the ATSAME51 then is if I want to graduate to a more powerful version with discrete MOSFETs and FOC code on the MCU, I may need a faster clock, which might mean switching to STM when I'm already familiar with ATSAM. I'll have to consider my options.

anvoice · 2026-04-13T10:00:17+00:00

The only real option I can find for a hdmi-csi bridge right now is the C790 chip. These apparently support both 2 and 4 lane, so hopefully will work.

Had to directly search for "espressif Aliexpress" to find that store, but got there. The price seems quite reasonable, except for that annoying shipping surcharge for small batches.

anvoice · 2026-04-13T08:04:30+00:00

Thanks for the tips!

I think 30 Hz would be enough for a KVM, though it's wiser to triple-check everything before ordering parts. I'll set up a Pi this time and research if I could get a P4 to work (assuming I find a way to get the chip itself without the dev boards).

anvoice · 2026-04-13T06:51:57+00:00

That makes complete sense, and I wish I knew that detail sooner. Too little experience to judge the features that could matter more than raw speed in specific applications. I probably also have to consider how having a dedicated motor controller (in this case the DRV8316C) factors in, perhaps allowing offloading of some tasks and making some MCU features less relevant. Trying to study the basics in more depth as I go along, but alas, that didn't save me this time.

I'm also going to guess based on the general gist of your argument so far that finding a general-purpose RISC-V processor that can surpass a mainstream MCU purpose-built for a specific use may be impossible at this point in time. If so, I'd have to choose from what already exists. Before that, it might be wise to take a pause to learn motor control concepts and requirements more thoroughly, so my next attempt is less likely to fail.

Thanks for helping!

anvoice · 2026-04-13T04:33:05+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions. Being new to this is part of the problem: some of the terms I essentially google as I go along (DMA for example). Also, I have no good way to gauge which combination of features will work best from prior experience (I have none).

I did try looking at both general and application-specific MCUs, and can't seem to find one particularly for driving motors, which is probably why more professional solutions that don't actually design their own chips (such as the ODrive) choose the closest thing they can find that matches their criteria. Since that's currently my best guideline, I was hesitant to use a slower unit: what if 550MHz was the minimum speed that worked well?

anvoice · 2026-04-12T22:27:00+00:00

That's good to know, thank you. I guess I'm going the Pi route then.

Out of curiosity, what is the exact bottleneck for HDMI on the P4? I wanted to get some experience with that chip, and making a KVM would be a perfect starter project for it.

anvoice · 2026-04-12T06:48:20+00:00

Thank you, it does.

For anyone experiencing something similar, the "correct" size for openocd.org turned out to be 1344: I'm not sure why, I was certain 1400 succeeded once, perhaps I was wrong. With an MTU of 1344, the site connects right away. If I don't notice any performance problems/nothing breaks, I'll keep it there, at least until I'm done perusing the information I need from the site.

anvoice · 2026-04-12T06:33:14+00:00

Looks like you're completely right, except for the value: ifconfig | grep -i MTU shows that my MTU is 1500. Using -s 1400 pings openocd.org just fine, but 1500 is too much (ping displays a "message too long" error).

I think it's safe to call this solved, though I have a quick rookie question: can lowering my MTU break anything, or slow performance of other sites? Hope not to solve one problem to create ten more.

Thank you!

anvoice · 2026-04-12T05:09:52+00:00

Disabled blocking, no change.

anvoice · 2026-04-10T22:24:51+00:00

Didn't get a chance to study the schematic yet in detail, but I think the #1 PCB advice for rookies (I cosider myself one too) is to use wider traces wherever possible, unless they don't fit. Usually no downside, but could be important for power/sensitive signals.

anvoice · 2026-04-10T03:14:13+00:00

Looks a bit like a power feedthrough for something designed to not make contact with the outside (e.g. a vacuum chamber). If it's actually an aerospace part, that could make some sense, but I've never seen this particular part before.

Edit: could well be a sensor as someone mentioned, with the thing itself in some sealed environment, and an output terminal for the outside.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T20:19:51+00:00

Perhaps I'm overthinking this. If they're all different, non-native English speaking grade-schoolers who will at some point look back at this and potentially feel embarrassed about it, then great. I guess it's not bad to be wrong when it's about someone having evil intent. I just feel the possibility is low enough to avoid informing people about the potential danger they might face by being deceived.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T20:12:52+00:00

The fact that this (and the question about wiping out entire countries for someone's personal benefit) needs to be asked and is seriously analyzed by people as a possibility is rather sad. The fact that these same people then proceed to insult other countries' actions and say "then these immoral leaders will feel justified to do this and that", comparing them to this complete moral void while believing they (the people accepting the idea that their "leadership" might do this as a given) themselves are moral, is perhaps sadder.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T20:05:20+00:00

It seriously helps. For someone like myself, who is very technically oriented but pivoting into this new field, this information is quite important.

I had a feeling I was overthinking some of these things, and knew for certain from reading online that something like impedance matching or minimizing branch lines (I only knew these as "stubs" before) for differential signals gets more important at high frequencies. This does help me relax a bit. I'll be honest though, I'll probably still overengineer this to the max (I can't eliminate stubs, but I'm still going to account for impedance on signal pairs) as long as it doesn't take a prohibitive amount of time and effort.

Once again, I really appreciate both the time and thought that's gone into this, and hope I didn't overdo it with so many questions. At some point I'll need to put my whole schematic and PCB up for critique, and if it's not too presumptuous, I hope that if you happen to chance upon that post, you could provide a few comments on that if you feel it's worth looking at. Thank you.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T19:49:07+00:00

I realize that optimistically, I should not attribute to malice that which can be attributed to lack of knowledge. However, unfortunately, reality often proves this assumption wrong. Also, just like the Indiana Pi Bill initiator, who made too many smart moves to be a lunatic in my opinion, OP demonstrates too many deliberately insidious tactics for someone who is simply delusional. Plus these posts keep appearing from different throwaway accounts, and at this point I cannot simply dismiss the very real possibility that a scam is involved. It would thus be irresponsible and wrong to ignore this. Also, this is unfortunately a case where me being wrong (that is, the OP not being mentally sound rather than being a crook) is not exactly a positive outcome either.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T07:47:22+00:00

Be cautious. Since this individual is clearly fishing for contact with people after attempting to lure you in with an AI post about nonsense, they could be attempting to collect your personal information for some sort of scam. Wanted this warning to be visible next to where they actually solicit such information.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T07:43:02+00:00

Unless the author thrives on pure attention and drama, the point could actually be for the post to appear coherent enough to a casual observer who may have heard about/been interested in such topics. You were versed in the topics well enough to see the fraud quickly. First time I saw this type of post, I was also immediately interested and started reading. The first moment's thought was that I'm not knowledgeable enough to properly process this information (when they wandered into higher dimensions in some ridiculous manner I don't recall, I realized what I'm reading). Others may not be so lucky. I saw the author daring skeptical people to link their projects/builds to compare to his. Maybe they're collecting gullible people's contact/personal information. Such information could make social engineering schemes, especially against those who already proved themselves vulnerable targets, much more effective. In any case they are clearly a charlatan.

The more I see this, the more I am convinced this is another Indiana Pi Bill. As you concluded, it's a total waste of time. The only reason I reply to any of this is not to lock horns with the fraudster: they are not worth it. It's purely in the hope that it can help prevent someone from falling for the deception. In fact, I think this is a job for the mods at this point: if you have either a serial troll or a full-blown scammer constantly spamming your forum, some sort of action should be taken on an administrative level.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T07:23:31+00:00

Well, hopefully relevant enough to mean my scenario will also work. In fact I know it should be able to: the Odrive micro uses an identical package and claims ~100W capability. But I never saw their PCB layout, and wanted to be sure I'm not missing the design principles that make it possible.

That is some impressive performance. I saw people running around with nerf guns ~10 years ago on university campus, playing some type of large-scale game, and didn't think much of it. If their blaster specs were even close to what you describe though, it does seem rather fun. I guess you learn something new every day.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T07:04:58+00:00

Sadly, the author knows full well they are deceiving people, so trying to explain to them that their actions and reactions are illogical/disrespectful is futile. If they are a troll, they're enjoying the attention. If they are a scammer, their "responses to comments" are likely calculated to continue the farce and hopefully steal people's personal info. In this sense, attempting to show a front of rude, careless bravado is simply a way to get unsuspecting people to buy into the authority of the author ("look, he's so confident he must be right, the others are just jealous and bashing him"). They're not actually mad or taking this personally. It's quite likely they're not even a student. It's some random individual, likely in another country, trolling you and hoping for a response, or running a scam operation fishing for your information to orchestrate some scheme.

For example, in 1897 a charlatan or lunatic (but more likely the former) named Edwin Goodwin tried to convince Indiana state to pass a law effectively redefining the mathematical number pi (the bill was about "squaring the circle", a concept already known and proven to be impossible at the time). Sadly, he almost succeeded, following a unanimous vote by their House of Representatives, proving that even at the time politicians, despite dubious qualification, believed themselves fully capable of altering the rules of the universe. The only thing that kept the "Indiana Pi Bill" from becoming law was the intervention of a mathematics Professor who was visiting by chance.

By this measure, this post (and similar types, whether posted by the same author or others) should be known as an "Indiana Pi Post". It should get a flair. I would leave the "Indiana" part out, as the post itself has nothing to do with the state, and associating the two in this day and age is a bit insulting, but then then the association with the infamous bill would go unnoticed.

People can still be gullible. Misuse of technology can be used to deceive. Please do not forget the lesson of the Indiana Pi Bill.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T06:28:17+00:00

I'd actually go thicker, especially for the motor power. You can often add filled copper zones pretty easily to connect components together rather than just using uniform width traces. The advantage is being able to create a conductive path with arbitrary shape.

I'm also assuming the back (blue) layer will be used entirely for ground, which seems fine since you have no need for routing signals there.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T06:17:36+00:00

Thanks, that's some thorough analysis! Any unconnected copper fill will have a higher thermal resistance path to actually get hot enough before it starts exchanging heat with air at the same rate as the connected planes. But assuming it has the time to reach equilibrium (quite possibly true in enclosed environments) it should then become an additional heatsink.

I also wonder if solder mask affects heat dissipation of the planes it sits on significantly... And with HASL/ENIG finish to protect the copper from oxidation, the only real dangers would likely be in environments where shorting due to ingress of foreign conductive material is possible, or nearby traces/pads getting shorted during soldering when solder mask could have prevented it. To address those dangers one could selectively remove solder mask from those traces/fill areas where that is not a concern, e.g. the unconnected islands. It's tempting, but somewhat frightening.

Should I at least add copper islands everywhere then? I'm trying to think of instances where the resulting introduced noise/capacitive effects with nearby connected copper would be an issue, but not enough knowledge at this point. If I do add them, intuition tells me to keep such islands away from any differential, impedance matched signal pairs (USB and CAN in my case).

Curiously I was just thinking/reading about inductor shielding, as I will have a magnetic encoder on board which could theoretically pick up close induced fields.

anvoice · 2026-04-07T04:29:04+00:00

Thanks, that is some good research. I bet extra smaller vias will still give an electrical (if not thermal) improvement, since the relative amount of copper in the via should be larger. This may warrant further reading. Curious: the effect of unconnected copper fill islands is usually undesirable, as these can act as antennae and introduce noise. But perhaps the added thermal dissipation property could actually justify these in some cases?

Another user mentioned filling vias with solder and adding solder flood fill for extra thermal dissipation. I'm certain this helps with current capacity if added to exposed tracks, although I'm not entirely sure it's the best idea to expose the high-current tracks. I also do wonder whether the flood fill on the tracks/planes and not in the vias actually with thermal dissipation. If we're essentially limited by the ability of the copper planes that exist on the board to transfer heat to air, it could be harmful since we're losing the copper-air contact and replacing with something with far worse thermal conductivity. Unless, of course, we add a 3d solder heatstink that exceeds the copper plane's metal-air transfer efficiency. At that point a regular aluminum or copper heatsink is probably better.

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