Electric slot Vehicle Automation (EVA)

An autonomous slot car for Carrera Digital 124 / 132, project with hardware and software components. It's written with PlatformIO using the Arduino framework.

The Hardware

General Information

This project was the author's Bachelor's Thesis at Hochschule Karlsruhe (HKA). Documentation of the project as a whole is thus only available in german language. The repository contents (including code comments) are english to ease adaption.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python

https://www.python.org/downloads/

Tick the "add to PATH" option just in case.

• Visual Studio Code

https://code.visualstudio.com/Download

• PlatformIO IDE
  Open VSCode, then find the Extensions Marketplace on the left hand side or press Ctrl+Shift+X. Search for "PlatformIO". Once found, install it by clicking on "install".
• C/C++ Extension Pack
  Install it in the same way as PlatformIO IDE.

Optional

• Matlab

https://www.mathworks.com/products/get-matlab.html

The project includes several Matlab scripts to aid development. If Matlab is not available to You, try adjusting the syntax to use Octave instead.

https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/download

Installation

• Download the code from this repository as a zip file.
• Unpack the archive into your working directory.
• Open VSCode.
• In VSCode, navigate to File > Open Folder or press Ctrl + K followed by Ctrl + O.
• Choose either "controller_emulator_status_monitor" or "datalogger_sensorcar" from this repository to open the respective project.
• In the EXPLORER on the left hand side, open the .vscode directory and click on c_cpp_properties.json. This will update the file to represent the paths on your development machine.
• On the bottom panel, click on the checkmark to build the project.
• Connect the ESP32 microcontroller to the development PC via USB.
• On the bottom panel, press the arrow pointing to the right to upload the code to the microcontroller.
• The code from "datalogger_sensorcar" is flashed to the vehicle, the code from "controller_emulator_status_monitor" is flashed to the stationary part of the system.
• To get a serial interface to the microcontroller for debugging, press the plug symbol on the bottom panel.
• Set up a Raspberry Pi 4 according to the instructions in "tools/pi-conf/instructions-to-setup-raspi" if output to a 1080p HDMI display is needed.

Optional

• In VSCode, navigate to File > Preferences > Settings or press Ctrl+,.
• Search for "word wrap", then change "Editor: Word Wrap" from "off" to "on". The source code is designed to be viewed with word wrap.

Usage

• You can find "globals.h" in the "include" folder using the EXPLORER on the left hand side.
• In both projects, this file is used to change behavior of the whole program easily.
• A description for every parameter is given as a comment in the file.
• State constants such as "SENSORCAR_IDLE_STATE" are not intended to be changed, as they are merely macros to make the code more readable.
• Extern variables that are declared in "globals.h" are initialized in "globals.cpp".
• The "tools" folder contains files that are used to assist development and are not required for functionaliy.

Contributing

If you have a suggestion that would make this better, please fork the repository. The author has finished development and will thus not be able to accept and process pull or feature requests.

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See "LICENSE.txt" for more information.