nf-robot 0.2.0

Robot control system for Stringman

nf_robot

Control code for the Stringman household robotic crane from Neufangled Robotics

Build Guides and Documentation

Purchase assembled robots or kits at neufangled.com

Installation of Robot Control Panel (end users)

Linux (python 3.11 or later)

sudo apt install python3-dev python3-virtualenv python3-pip ffmpeg
python -m virtualenv venv
pip install "stringman[host]"

Run

Start headless robot controller in a mode that connects to remote telemetry

stringman-headless

For LAN mode, see local_ui/README.md

Installation of Robot Control Panel (developers)

git clone https://github.com/nhnifong/cranebot3-firmware.git

sudo apt install python3-dev python3-virtualenv python3-pip ffmpeg
python -m virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[host,dev,pi]"

If you have an RTX 5090

pip install --force-reinstall torch==2.8.0 torchvision==0.23.0 torchaudio==2.8.0 torchcodec==0.6.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu129

Run tests

pytest tests

Raspberry pi (development)

stringman-pilot-rpi-image contains the configuration needed to build an SD card image for various stringman robot components.

On a raspberry pi with suitable ram, such as a Pi 5, with rpi-image-gen checked out into a directory which is a sibling of this repo, Build the image with

./rpi-image-gen build \
  -S ../cranebot3-firmware/stringman-pilot-rpi-image/ \
  -c ../cranebot3-firmware/stringman-pilot-rpi-image/config/stringman.yaml \
  -- IGconf_device_user1pass='Fo0bar!!'

After booting the robot component with the image for the first time, it will use it's camera to look for a wifi share QR code to get connected. You can produce a code with qifi.org

Once the pi sees the code it will connect to the network and remember those settings. It should then be discoverable by the control panel via multicast DNS (Bonjour)

Starting from a base image

Alternatively the software can be set up from a fresh raspberry pi lite 64 bit image. After booting any raspberry pi from a fresh image, perform an update

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

When starting with the lite raspi image, you will be missing the following, so install those.

sudo apt install git python3-dev python3-virtualenv

Set the component type by uncommenting the appropriate line in server.conf

nano server.conf

Install stringman

git clone https://github.com/nhnifong/cranebot3-firmware.git && cd cranebot3-firmware
chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

additional settings for anchors

Setup for any raspberry pi that will be part of an anchor Enable uart serial harware interface interactively.

sudo raspi-config

In interface optoins, select serial port. disable the login shell, but enable hardware serial.

add the following lines lines to to /boot/firmware/config.txt at the end this disables bluetooth, which would otherwise occupy the uart hardware. Then reboot after this change

enable_uart=1
dtoverlay=disable-bt

additional settings for gripper

Setup for the raspberry pi in the gripper with the inventor hat mini Enable i2c

sudo raspi-config nonint do_i2c 0

Add this line to /boot/firmware/config.txt just under dtparam=i2c_arm=on and reboot

dtparam=i2c_baudrate=400000

Rebuilding the python module

within a venv install the build tools

python3 -m pip install --upgrade build twine

at this repo's root, build the module. Artifacts will be in dist/

python3 -m build

Upload to Pypi

python3 -m twine upload dist/*

Training models

Support this project

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