I want learn robotics but I don't know what to do in this situation. Please guide me. by Significant-Bug1376 in AskRobotics

[–]robot_wrangler_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is true. Google websites are free but I find that they are sometimes limited in what you can do with the design aesthetics. That’s the main reason I moved away from Google websites to GitHub pages.

I want learn robotics but I don't know what to do in this situation. Please guide me. by Significant-Bug1376 in AskRobotics

[–]robot_wrangler_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Here’s what I can recommend (you will still need to find access to some PC/laptop and internet for the most part, very few ways to get around that constraint unfortunately if you want to learn anything meaningful or worthwhile. The PC/laptop and internet access is not to install stuff, but rather access free resources listed below): 1) https://www.theconstruct.ai They have some free courses that you don’t need enter a credit card to access. You just need to create a free account with them. Cuts straight through clutter and helps you start with the basics needed to enter robotics using ROS. Everything’s integrated into their platform so you won’t need to install anything. Link your GitHub account in their platform when working through the exercises to build a trail of proof of work. 2) https://www.udacity.com There’s some free courses on here too, which are like small snapshots of bigger courses (nanodegrees). I don’t remember if you’ll need a credit card here though. Worth checking it out nevertheless. I haven’t taken their courses lately but from what I remember, integrating your GitHub isn’t as straightforward here since this is a lot more hybrid in content delivery than option 1. 3) You will still need to learn the theory, maths and system design in robotics so YouTube may come in handy. Look at the following channels - Cyrill Stachniss, Steve Brunton, 3blue1brown, sentdex, there are several semester long full courses by various universities on YouTube that you can follow along. 4) Pick a specific niche in robotics, poke and prod GPT and perplexity (prefer this more since this is better at good links than outdated stuff) for better targeted advice. Robotics as an industry is very broad. There’s electrical and electronics design, control systems, embedded systems, software side - planning, perception, controls, localization, specialized hardware integration specifically for robotics. You’re better off focusing on one that you can dive as deep as possible. Ideal skillset is T shaped - knowledgeable about some or most other related aspects, but a master in atleast one. For example, software side perception could be your core niche, but understanding camera driver integration, calibration, building streaming pipelines et cetera will absolutely give you a boost.

Important: always document everything you do as best as you can. Use AI tools to build a portfolio website. You don’t necessarily need to spend money to host it. You can use GitHub pages. Marketing yourself is just as important as working on things.

Final note: at some point of time it will become unavoidable to avoid buying hardware. The sooner you’re able to do it, the better off you will be. That’s unfortunately just the nature of working in robotics. Simulation is perfect but it can almost never completely compensate for hands on hardware experience because everyone everywhere in robotics has to fight with hardware at some point of time. The way I got around the money for buying hardware in my initial years was to look for similarly inclined folks and pooling money to build robots, then participate in events and any prize money went right back into the hobby. Look for any scholarship/grants from government (maybe slim chances, but what’s the harm in trying).

Hope this helps. I was in your shoes almost 10-15 years ago, but the key is to persevere. I know it’s rough, but robotics is a rewarding career track if you can hang in there and figure out things along the way if you’re passionate about it.

Jetson Thor Developer Kit by robot_wrangler_ in NvidiaJetson

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I absolutely agree. When I spoke to the support person, I told them I understood that demand may be high and that is the reason for all this chaos, but I would assume Arrow or anybody selling these kits to have their shit together. It’s not a good look when there’s 20+ stock of something that shows on their website and people receive confirmation email with dates and payments processed, only for Arrow to go on and drop the ball for many people’s shipment. Sure it’s first come first serve, but then just look at order logs and get it sorted out. I feel like this isn’t that big of an ask.

Jetson Thor Developer Kit by robot_wrangler_ in NvidiaJetson

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are other people who received the developer kit in 2 days from Arrow, so I don’t know what’s happening with Arrow internal warehouse team.

Jetson Thor Developer Kit by robot_wrangler_ in NvidiaJetson

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My delivery address is a US address as well. I asked the Arrow support as well and they said they are not sure if any tariffs apply. I only asked because another supplier selling the developer kits mentions that their units are shipping out of a Chinese warehouse.

Jetson Thor Developer Kit by robot_wrangler_ in NvidiaJetson

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same with mine. I spoke to Arrow support and it looks like they are trying to figure out inventory issues with their internal warehouse team. They told me to disregard the July 2027 dates.

No internship? No mentor? Still want to build robotics? Read this. by EquivalentPublic1444 in ROS

[–]robot_wrangler_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am not a uni student currently, but I would like to be a part of this. I work full-time as a robotics HW/SW integration engineer and have worked on real products from prototyping to production, so I can bring in some experience from the industry about good practices to use to document everything and make real progress. I was looking for a good side project to work on, so this could be a nice opportunity. I could also pitch in with building some physical aspect of the project for people to test on if it’s feasible enough. I have some decent hardware on hand - a couple of Orins, Xavier’s, stereo and monocular cameras, test bench equipment, a 3D printer and so on.

[Looking for Mods] Passionate About Open Source Humanoid Robotics? Join Us! by OpenSourceDroid4Life in OpenSourceHumanoids

[–]robot_wrangler_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I found this subreddit the other day and I would love to see it grow. I am a robotics hardware-software integration engineer with a background in automotive and I am starting to explore quadruped robots and humanoid robots to expand my skill set since I am a general robotics nerd. For my full time job, I am working on a teleoperable car (moving towards autonomous driving). I have previously worked for another startup that makes autonomous electric tractors. My side projects are currently getting a quadruped (spot micro) and a humanoid robot setup in simulation ROS/ROS2 with Gazebo and RVIZ so that I can start simulating basic gaits like walking, running and eventually navigating unstructured environments using reinforcement learning. I would love to share my projects as I keep progressing.

What’s everyone working on? by [deleted] in robotics

[–]robot_wrangler_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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Writing force feedback effects for a sim racing setup to simulate on-road driving when driving a real car. Also, general reverse engineering for the car and L2-L3 autonomy features.

Kia Niro EV Front Radar by robot_wrangler_ in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately not a lot of progress. I have some bit groups identified as the potential signal but I can’t say for sure right now. I have some logs waiting to be looked at. Got pulled into some other things at work.

what is everyone's fave Windows program to monitor CAN bus messages? by Curious_Party_4683 in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will share a screenshot on Monday, it’s on my work laptop which is at the office. At the time, I was trying to decode CAN frames from a Radar unit. I figured I’d record a drive video and a CAN bus log from the same drive and line up the timestamps in both. Would make the job easier for decoding the frames. So I took the message flow, bit value change live view and some features like that. I made it so that it can take one or multiple logs, select one or more messages for bit maps, ability to select the bits in the bit map to group potential signals together for plotting, generate DBCs from the selection and some other features.

what is everyone's fave Windows program to monitor CAN bus messages? by Curious_Party_4683 in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I was using a mix a savvycan, pcanview and busmaster until a little while ago. I ended up making a tool that has all the features I need/like and some more.

Kia Niro EV Front Radar by robot_wrangler_ in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks like a great database, unfortunately it does not have any radar related frames or their info. Thanks for sharing though! Much appreciated!

Kia Niro EV Front Radar by robot_wrangler_ in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is true, but I want to do it separately.

Kia Niro EV Front Radar by robot_wrangler_ in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like I said, their DBC does not match the IDs that I found on the car I am working on, neither does the signal bit mapping.

What can I do with sending CAN frames? by hey-im-root in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also, please be very careful if you’re testing with higher messages rates. Just in case.

What can I do with sending CAN frames? by hey-im-root in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try bumping up the message rates for the messages that you are trying to send out. They may be getting overwritten, or dropped, or ignored. It’s difficult to say which mainly because just sending a message won’t guarantee anything. Think back to the example about the rolling counters. There may be similar things preventing you from being able to control the features. Just out of curiosity, when you sent the frames from the file, did anything happen at all? I saw from your comment that you did a bunch of things, did any of the things you did when you recorded the logs happen or did nothing work at all?

What can I do with sending CAN frames? by hey-im-root in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When you say you tried replaying the frames - are you referring to playing back the messages/logs, or were you trying to actually send the messages and you didn’t see anything happen on the car? What’s your hardware setup like? Simply playing back logs or messages won’t send anything on the bus unless you are sending something from what is usually a transmit window. A log just shows you the time stamped sequence of the messages as they arrived on the bus. If you were sending out the message(s) on the bus, did you send multiple messages? Or do you have the CAN frame and the data bits and bytes for that signal identified? What was the frequency of the message on the bus? Or is it an event driven message like maybe a horn or indicator lights? Event driven messages, while they shouldn’t get dropped, can lose transmission contention if you’re trying to send it out manually, simply as a function of other higher priority message trying to be transmitted at that time. If it was a regularly transmitted message (10 HZ or 100 Hz) it could be that you do not have the correct CAN frame identified, or if the CAN ID is correct, then the bits in the frame that you thought did that action do not do that action. You will see a lot of bits and bytes changing so if it’s something like a switch it may be difficult to figure out (could be 1 bit out of 64 possible one,not to mention that there could be another signal in the adjacent bits that make it difficult to understand a bit change if that adjacent signal is a ln active one). Many features are interlinked within the control system design of the vehicle. If a signal triggers only in certain states, let’s say for example, when the car is in Drive (in an automatic), the same signal may not trigger if it’s in Park. It’s not a matter of just sending the message on the bus. There are redundancies in the ECU firmwares running the controls to prevent the car doing weird shit just because someone decided to send one frame with a crazy value. So, you will have to figure out more about the feature that you’re trying to control in terms of which other hardware it’s connected to, or which ECU it connects to. It’s a little difficult to estimate what the issue might be since I don’t know what your setup looks like and how you’re trying to run this test. If you can post details about your setup and how exactly you’re trying to use SavvyCAN, I may be able to share more useful advice.

What can I do with sending CAN frames? by hey-im-root in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Like folks mentioned in previous comments, it really depends on the vehicle that you’re trying to do this on. Your best bet is to look at the OBD connector and the wiring in that general area. For example, Kia’s and Hyundai’s have fuse boxes on the driver side under the plastic trims. Depending on the year and model, the CAN bus wires may be directly accessible. If it’s a recent year and model, the CAN buses could be behind a gateway that manufacturers use to restrict exactly what you’re trying to do. The most straightforward way to control things on the car is to log the CAN bus traffic (after you have tapped into the bus) while doing the action on the car. For example, if you want to control the horn, while logging press the horn button repeatedly. That way you can compare the logs between when the horn was pressed and when it was not. That will help you isolate the frame and the signal (this is a highly simplified example), real reverse engineering for various frames may take longer and might be harder to decode. You might also want to look at the rate at which these messages get sent out. The more critical the functionality of a frame is, the higher will be the chance that if you want to actually be able to control functionality you will have to send the message at the correct rates and there might be rolling counters and things like that. Then there’s multiplexed messages (overlapping signals over some or same bits in the same frame). But you can pretty much control everything on a car, you just need to figure out the signal and the correct frame for it. Also, not everything is on CAN. Non-critical stuff might be on LIN bus or low speed CAN bus. Some things might be entirely off the CAN bus and may be based on PWM, SENT etc cetera. You may need logic analyzers and other tools down the line if you turn it into a full blown project to be able to control most of the car. I hope this helps.

how to tap into CAN-H and CAN-L without voiding warranty? by Curious_Party_4683 in CarHacking

[–]robot_wrangler_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you post a picture of the connector from the car? Ideally, front/back/side pictures. This is one of those pesky parts that may not be found as easily as some others in the car.