Kilobot charging

In this page, you can find information relative to the charging of the kilobots.

At University of Sheffield, we are building a metallic plates charger (to charge up to 600 kilobots at a time). Once completed and tested, we will put here our design.

How to add Charging Mode Button to the KiloGUI

If you are using the kilobot firmware 2.0 (see Kilobot Firmware), and you would like to have the possibility of setting your robots in Charging Mode, you can add a button to the KiloGUI to send a message with this Mode. The Charging Mode may be useful because you can visually check if the robot is getting charged (or not) through a feeble LED flashing. If the robots blinks, it is getting charged.

1. Download the source-code of the KiloGUI from GitHub: https://github.com/acornejo/kilogui

2. Compile it a first time to check if you have your system correctly setup

On linux, you will need the following dependencies: dpkg-dev, debhelper, libqt4-dev, libftdi-dev.

In Ubuntu, just run:

apt-get install dpkg-dev debhelper libqt4-dev libftdi-dev

3. Patch the code by adding the charging functionality,

* Edit the file src/kilowindow.cpp

* Add to the function

static const kilo_cmd_t KILO_COMMANDS[] = { …… };

the button Charging associated to the function CHARGE, by using this text:

{"Charging", CHARGE}

4. Re-compile, install and run kilogui. Now, you should find the new button Charging in your KiloGui.