Ah Chris the Pico has a lot of potential for young ones & us older humans. I like how you mix the practical/coding into an episode & make it enjoyable for all ages.
Hi Chris, how’s thing in the UK? Today’s video is going to be a hit for the new programmers of all ages. Easy to follow instructions , and good project ideas. Time for me to head over to my work bench and get started. See you next weekend.
Zebras and giraffes, virtual puppeteering... This video is both hilarious and educational at the same time. I can't believe it's 17 minutes long, it felt so short!
Chris I'm so happy you did this video. I think you're the only person I know who has done a demo without just flashing the LED. My mind immediately went to, how supplement the code to stop the jittering...😊...I was totally enthralled. Maybe round the value before passing it to the servo. 😉 Love the videos as always.
Another great video for those of us who are not truly computer savvy. You make the coding seem so simple and enjoyable. This inspires me to tear down old electronics, raid the parts store of its switch inventory, pull out a soldering iron, and buy a herd of Picos for the different joints of a few intended puppeteering projects. Nice work. Thanks!
Back in the 1990s, when I worked for an industrial controls company, I learned about servos and something called a "dead zone". Programming in a Dead Zone eliminates jitter. So it really has nothing to do with your potentiometer, instead, it is the nature of servos. It's amazing to me to see you using $200 worth of hardware that can replace a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), that back in the '90s, cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Those PLCs were a bit of a rip off. They were just 8 bit micro controllers with some inputs and outputs and a simplified programming language. Late '80's through the '90's we would do the same thing with a Z80 and some code written in C. The advantage of a PLC was the electrician could program it.
Excellent work. Pixador’s comment had me fast forwarding to spot the Zebra! Anyway you showed all the basics of input and output - both digital and analog(ue). My Pico starter kit arrived on Friday so tomorrow I’m off to the shed. It was also useful showing how you connect up to the Pi 400 as it helps to get started.
What i liked the most are the sounds that supports the visual effects of the LEDs after pressing the switch, even if my limited python abilities prevented me from identifying it in the code base.
Explaining Computers... Now complete with lights, sound effects, lions, tigers and giraffes, oh my! :-) Really good fun Chris, and great code and hardware hook up examples too. Thanks for another great video.
Another option that ***might*** reduce the jitter is to heat, or cool, or change the relative humidity, near the Pot. The jitter is presumably caused by intermittent connection to various windings in the Pot. Temperature change will affect the relative dimensions, through thermal expansion, and humidity affects accumulation of static charge on insulating surfaces near the contact regions. Great video!
Very nicely done, Chris! I like how you explain both hardware and software so we get a complete understanding of the whole system. Enabling the internal pull-down resister for the open switch is a particularly nice touch! Managing the LED pin assignments with a list simplifies the `while` loop in your Python code dramatically.
I've got 7 so far! Plus a couple of Pimoroni Tiny 2040. Along with loads of Arduino Unos, Nanos, Megas and Pro Minis, and a few ESP32s, ESP8266s and Seeeduino Xaios. Buying one microcontroller is the start of a very slippery slope!!!!
A welcome return of both the Pico and Blu Tack. BTW, I don't think the age of the pot is the problem. ADCs in general are a bit jittery. Put a 10uF capacitor between the wiper and ground. That should smooth things out a lot better.
@@onjofilms It's the nature of the real world, there is noise. The only reason there is not noise inside computers is the efforts taken to design it out or at least design out the effects.
@@wayland7150 That is true. The reason for debouncing in the coding would be to save physical space on your circuit board. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
Great video as always Chris. Thank you. I'm currently working with the Pico's little cousin, the Tiny 2040 and am trying out the coding that you explained in this video. I played around with it as well and had some fun with it. Didn't have a servo motor handy but that's okay. Will be getting one at a later time. Thanks for these videos. They're a great help and hoping you get a Tiny2040 for future videos.
The dithering can be fixed using a simple closed loop controlling approach. That would be a very good introductory example to Control Theory using the Pico.
@@marksterling8286 losing.......loosing...........we know by now how autocorrect sometimes makes our text somewhat inaccurate, so it is worth checking before posting. You may be very experienced in giving commands to computers , so will appreciate accuracy in coding.
You should always place a small (10nF) capacitor on ADC inputs to micros to give something to charge up and dominate the internal sample and hold circuit capacitance. What you get is the result seen here if you don't.
Good job! You just demonstrated common problem with potentiometers... they decay with age and add noise but even new ones do that. Thats why audiophile way is to replace it with ladder resistor switch.. but for your project all you need is a small capacitor in paralell across potentiometer mid and side pin and current limiting resistor in series to the gpio pin.. that would remove high frequency noise.
Really great video Chris, i have been trying to teach my son about pulse modulation but I failed to get his attention, today he sat down and watched you video and now we are breaking out the pi zero wh connected to a breadboard and a couple of servos, he is trying different code as I type this. I have not got a pico yet preferring to ssh onto the zero. We both wondered with the earlier powering a pi from a 12v lead acid battery and today having analogue inputs and servos. Perhaps an explaining computers, robot or weather monitoring station would be a nice combination of the two episodes.
Thanks for this. I have a video on using servos with a standard Pi here: ua-cam.com/video/xHDT4CwjUQE/v-deo.html I also did two videos on a weather station using a Pi earlier this year, first one here: ua-cam.com/video/ChQpD2gsC20/v-deo.html -- and second (where I build an anemometer) here: ua-cam.com/video/1LPEPZ02-t8/v-deo.html But there will be more projects . . .
Great video Chris, as always. I now use CircuitPython on any microcontroller that supports it. I moved away from raw MicroPython except on something like an ESP32 that doesn't support CircuitPython. On the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip boards there is a great PIOASM assembler that can run out of the box via CircuitPython. The latest version of Thonny does a very good job using MicroPython and CircuitPython boards.
Brilliant introduction to micropython and programming with the Pico! Really excited for my Picos to arrive in a few weeks, it’s a far cry from my assembly code days with the 8051.
I had no idea at the time that a second part was going to be published. I try to keep a variety of content here. Most of my videos also pick up most of their views many months and years after posting, so a few weeks "delay" is not that significant for most viewers. :)
Love this. İt's a perfect introduction to the kinds of things one imagines doing with a Pico. I did a show and tell video last week at work about the Pico but I should just have played this :)
So, I don't know if someone already mentioned it, but the issue with the jitter on the servo wasn't caused because your potentiometer was 40 years old, but rather on the fact that the 16 bits of the ADC are not "all useful" in this scenario. You only use the entire ADC resolution to average its value on most cases, or you can discard 1, 2 or 3 bits out of it as well. I know there are some cases where you can just use the entire range, but that's also paired with an analog front end circuitry on the ADC, with matched impedances, and not a single pot connected to it. What I would suggest is to add a capacitor (100nF or so) between the output of the potentiometer and ground, and also average (or directly discard 2 or 3 bits) the raw ADC samples.
This could headline a "demystifying servos" playlist! Also, mad props for the efficient code: I'm about to jump ship from the HMS C++ to the HMS Python. Thanks for another great video!
Great video, a lot happing for such few lines of code. I'm new to the Pico so I've binged a lot of videos on the Pico! One problem I had with the SG90 was it going beyond the 180 degree mark which resulted in it shaking and heating up. After adding and displaying the 'value' variable to make it visible in the shell, I could find the value that took the servo beyond the 180 and created an if statement to limit the range of the value. It did work, although there was a region of the pot that didn't work. Will study PWM and Duty cycle for a deeper understanding of the code.
It might be too much for UA-cam but, I'd love to see an explanation of a Pico (ideally a pair or n of them) hosting finite state machines interacting with a state machine on a host computer. In addition to or alternatively, having the Pico report state (ie. location, temp or the output of an "instrument") would be awesome. Really enjoy your series as do my son and grandson.
Good stuff. Reminds me of learning electronics back in the 1980's. The devices were bigger and a lot less integrated, but with a couple of dozen chips we could do the same thing. :-)
For the Servo jittering issue, easiest fix would just be to round to nearest 100, you can clearly see in the video that the jittery-ness of the values only fluctuates 100 values or so. Edit, The jittering output would make a pretty cool random string generator: sha256 the string of input^input.
Thanks again Chris, always looking forward to your videos, very informative and useful information brought to us in the usual colourful manner we like.
Picos are an ideal companion to a Pi computer, as they are much better at connecting to physical devices than the GPIO on a Pi is. My current project uses a Pi 3B with a touch screen for controlling a Pico that will have a motor driver, servos and a stepper motor attached. I'll probably use I2C for communication, but haven't got that far yet. The Pi will give me remote control through Wi-Fi, Ethernet or Bluetooth, including the potential to stream video so I can see what I'm controlling remotely!
Very educational! Nice change to the usual SBC-stuff! This stuff encourages me to learn & experiment a bit with the pico and RPi sbc's. Keep up the good work! Regards, Willem
Thanks for your videos. I have enjoyed them for a while. Vintage pot and vintage breadboard (like many I own) with a dignified aged cream color from the original white.
Hahahaaa.. Zebras & Giraffes.. you're mad as a box of frogs 😄👌 That's why your content is complete Gold-Dust. For me and the kids I work with. Got our Picos 2day. Thanks a million Christopher 🙏✨
Chris great tutorial! Just what I needed to help me get the basics down so I can complete a project that I have been working on. Once again, Thank you!!!!
Nice tutorial! I've done this type of thing in "C" using an Arduino, but I've never used Python, and have always wondered if it would be easier. This gave me a nice comparison of the two languages. Very nice, thank you.
I have a project on the go to connect multiple Picos using the RFM69HCW radios (not the LoRa variants). The libraries for these radios are only available in C (they be available in CircuitPython but I believe CP doesn't support interupts, which my project needs), so I went down the C++ route a couple of months ago using the Pico SDK and Visual Studio Code. It was an absolute nightmare to setup and get working on W10 (UA-cam was my friend here), and is pretty cumbersome to use. In the last month or so RP2040 support became available on the Arduino IDE which I have briefly used just to test that it works. If the radio libraries were available to Micro Python I'd use that in a heartbeat. So much easier to use, and TBH I wouldn't miss the greater (much greater) efficiency of C++ on this project.
@@lesliedeana5142 Yes, thanks. And I like what I’ve seen of C++. Its relative inaccessibility (on the Pico at least) appeals to my inner geek/snob, it seems to be extremely feature-rich, and as you say, is fast in execution. But, and I am no expert here, Python and Micro Python, far from being the modern day equivalent of BASIC (and that wasn’t THAT bad), are also feature-rich and really nice languages to use.
Brilliant video, Chris. I’ve been programming on the Pico since February. I like the simplicity of Micro Python, but I’ve been using the C SDK for maximum speed.
Great video on the Pi Pico... love the code and applications. Your old wire wound potentiometer is potentially causing the jitter in values... maybe time for a potential upgrade.
High quality video, as you always do. The feature I find most interesting (and innovative) is the PIO, the set of state machine which can emulate peripherals (or make new ones). I hope you are looking at exploring the PIO. Do you know whether there is a compiler from C/C++ to the assembly language of the PIO?
Informative and very well timed, I'm learning and experimenting at the moment with controlling a matrix of LEDs with the ultimate aim of making a unique animated clock. You gave some handy programming tips, especially controlling i/o from an array.
Very clearly explained - useful. To fix the jittering pot, could you average-out the readings? For example, read 5 readings into an array, add them together, divide by 5. It'd make things a little more complicated, though - perhaps better to just replace the pot - although as other comments have mentioned, the varying readings could be in the ADC, and not the pot.
I'm not sure the age of that potentiometer is solely responsible for the "jitter." I think all potentiometers have a bit of jitter in them -- much like all switches have a bit of "bounce" where it switches rapidly on and off as you close or open the switch. I'm sure you could write some code to "de-jitter" that pot -- maybe something where it examines the previous value and if it's within a certain %, don't change the value being sent? Obviously that's more work than what's needed in this video -- you were trying to prove a concept, not build a working machine. This was lots of fun to watch. Nice to know about all the stuff these GPIO pins can do. Thanks!
Very very nice - I feel jealous, that already not young, It's so helpful for all who likes electronic. PS Chris - you are ready to make your own HVAC DDC for your home.
I'm sure you'd have the same problem with a new potentiometer too. It's a noise issue in my opinion. A capacitor across the wiper to ground would probably sort that out.
ExplainingComputers is Concise and Clear as always! :) The servo jitter can indeed be reduced as Roger Froud pointed out using a capacitor to dampen the noise. Probably the best way. Yet, while the best software is hardware, I would still add a software value damper to the while loop which averages out the values as a fail safe.
@@TriAngles3D Exactly. My professor was teaching us these concepts but with push buttons. Called 'Debouncing', he showed us both the hardware and software way. He insisted that we use the software way though. :-)
hi chris. excelen job as usual. just wanted to suggest idea for episode and that is that several days ago was put out port of open-source proxmox or bare-metal (type 1) hypervisor for raspberry pi. I think it would make great episode to show how with it, raspberry and couple of external disk you could now make your own small private server and run several services and/or distros at the same time. maybe even show how to install it on pc too and make a small cluster. you can find it in reddit section for proxmox and github under pimox (I would put links to them but I know that youtube would automatically delete my post so...)
Your jittering servo / pot input value was more likely noise induced in the input from the servo motor brushes or the pi itself than a dirty pot. Decoupling the power to the servo either with a separate supply or simply a .1uf capacitor across the supply pins would probably fix the issue. The same can be done across the pot. Dirty pots typically go open to the wiper briefly then back to their positional value, often very quickly but the result is a more random noisy signal.
The jittering may be not the old pot but the self noise of the ADC or to be more precise it‘s reference voltage caused by the switching regulator. I have read that you can reduce adc noise in software by pulling up that pin to VCC
You could write code to filter out the jitter, Just average the last 50 ish potentiometer inputs before the current one and average it then add maybe 5%. If the new value is not a greater difference, continue to return the same value. If it is different, write it to a variable for the current servo position .., and it keeps sending the same value to the PWM u til significant change
Ah Chris the Pico has a lot of potential for young ones & us older humans. I like how you mix the practical/coding into an episode & make it enjoyable for all ages.
Exactly. These videos have been a big help in my classes and I'm still tinkering with my Pi and the Tiny2040 (little cousin to the Pico).
I spotted a Raspberry Pi pico at my local electronics shop. I'm going to use one to make a puzzle box. Thank you for your excellent explanation.
17 minutes has gone by in a flash an I still want more! Thank you for another fun and educational video (as always)
😮😮
Pi Pico in action with our old friend servo from the hamster feeder... Another amazing EC Sunday !
Hi Chris, how’s thing in the UK?
Today’s video is going to be a hit for the new programmers of all ages. Easy to follow instructions , and good project ideas.
Time for me to head over to my work bench and get started. See you next weekend.
Zebras and giraffes, virtual puppeteering... This video is both hilarious and educational at the same time. I can't believe it's 17 minutes long, it felt so short!
Chris only has 3/4 of a million subs, his channel is basically the best kept secret on the interwebs.
Coincidentally enough, this is something I have been looking for a while now
The Raspberry Pi Pico is more interesting then I first thought. Looking forward to your next video!
Hi Perry, there is a lot of potential in this tiny and low-cost little Pi.
There so cheap and affordable which makes them very worthy too
Chris I'm so happy you did this video. I think you're the only person I know who has done a demo without just flashing the LED. My mind immediately went to, how supplement the code to stop the jittering...😊...I was totally enthralled. Maybe round the value before passing it to the servo. 😉 Love the videos as always.
MicroPython is awesome! It brings back the ease of coding similar to the likes of Basic with an interaction of the real world!
Another great video for those of us who are not truly computer savvy. You make the coding seem so simple and enjoyable. This inspires me to tear down old electronics, raid the parts store of its switch inventory, pull out a soldering iron, and buy a herd of Picos for the different joints of a few intended puppeteering projects. Nice work. Thanks!
Back in the 1990s, when I worked for an industrial controls company, I learned about servos and something called a "dead zone". Programming in a Dead Zone eliminates jitter. So it really has nothing to do with your potentiometer, instead, it is the nature of servos. It's amazing to me to see you using $200 worth of hardware that can replace a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), that back in the '90s, cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Those PLCs were a bit of a rip off. They were just 8 bit micro controllers with some inputs and outputs and a simplified programming language. Late '80's through the '90's we would do the same thing with a Z80 and some code written in C. The advantage of a PLC was the electrician could program it.
@@wayland7150 - Ladder Logic was cryptic as heck. PLCs were a rip off but well worth it to the companies who needed such a thing.
The magic of film making is so powerful, I am in awe 😍
Excellent work. Pixador’s comment had me fast forwarding to spot the Zebra! Anyway you showed all the basics of input and output - both digital and analog(ue). My Pico starter kit arrived on Friday so tomorrow I’m off to the shed. It was also useful showing how you connect up to the Pi 400 as it helps to get started.
What i liked the most are the sounds that supports the visual effects of the LEDs after pressing the switch, even if my limited python abilities prevented me from identifying it in the code base.
This is the thing that i have been looking for a while
Simple and clear, makes programming accessible to everyone. Brilliant channel.
This series is awesome I'm glad other ppl are loving it too. thankyou much blessings.
Explaining Computers... Now complete with lights, sound effects, lions, tigers and giraffes, oh my! :-) Really good fun Chris, and great code and hardware hook up examples too. Thanks for another great video.
Hi Steve. :)
The Pico looks like it's so much fun. I look forward to it making another appearance in the future!
Another option that ***might*** reduce the jitter is to heat, or cool, or change the relative humidity, near the Pot. The jitter is presumably caused by intermittent connection to various windings in the Pot. Temperature change will affect the relative dimensions, through thermal expansion, and humidity affects accumulation of static charge on insulating surfaces near the contact regions. Great video!
your explnations are so clear and right to the point, even with your accent. Two thumbs up I just subscribed .
Thanks, and welcome aboard!
Very well done. This is my favorite EC video of 2021-so far! My RP Pico order just arrived and I can’t wait to try these myself! Bravo!
Sounds like you have some experimenting to do! :) Good luck with it.
@@ExplainingComputers Definitely! Thanks!
Nice video explaining what we can do with those Raspberry Pi Picos and some Python code. Thanks Mr Barnatt !
Very nicely done, Chris! I like how you explain both hardware and software so we get a complete understanding of the whole system. Enabling the internal pull-down resister for the open switch is a particularly nice touch! Managing the LED pin assignments with a list simplifies the `while` loop in your Python code dramatically.
Nice Video, picked up a couple picos and now waiting for a few rainy days to play with these
pls make more of such videos on raspberry pi pico.. All the videos from your channel are awesome
I've been waiting for this. I've bought 2 already!
I think Pi Picos are kind of an addiction!
I've got 7 so far! Plus a couple of Pimoroni Tiny 2040. Along with loads of Arduino Unos, Nanos, Megas and Pro Minis, and a few ESP32s, ESP8266s and Seeeduino Xaios. Buying one microcontroller is the start of a very slippery slope!!!!
A welcome return of both the Pico and Blu Tack. BTW, I don't think the age of the pot is the problem. ADCs in general are a bit jittery. Put a 10uF capacitor between the wiper and ground. That should smooth things out a lot better.
Like de-bouncing a push button. That can be done either with the capacitor as you mentioned, or in the coding.
A capacitor correcting the problem points to jittering voltage from the potentiometer, not the ADC.
@@dang48 If the capacitor solves the problem then it's less work for the software.
@@onjofilms It's the nature of the real world, there is noise. The only reason there is not noise inside computers is the efforts taken to design it out or at least design out the effects.
@@wayland7150 That is true. The reason for debouncing in the coding would be to save physical space on your circuit board. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
No biscuits today but at least i have coffee to watch the video of the week. ☕
More information for my garden railroad. Interesting and well presented, Thanks
Ooooh. I like that idea!!
That software looks very intuitive. Thanks for the great educational video.
I would love to see some experiments with
FreeRTOS and the Pi Pico
Thank you sir! I was eagerly waiting for more pico related content!
More to come!
Great video as always Chris. Thank you.
I'm currently working with the Pico's little cousin, the Tiny 2040 and am trying out the coding that you explained in this video. I played around with it as well and had some fun with it. Didn't have a servo motor handy but that's okay. Will be getting one at a later time.
Thanks for these videos. They're a great help and hoping you get a Tiny2040 for future videos.
The dithering can be fixed using a simple closed loop controlling approach. That would be a very good introductory example to Control Theory using the Pico.
I wondered if you did some rounding on the pot results say nearest 10 would take out the dithering but without loosing any accuracy
simple_smoothed_value = simple_smoothed_value * 0.9 + lastest_value * 0.1
I would try to divide it by 100 and truncate the result.
@@marksterling8286 losing.......loosing...........we know by now how autocorrect sometimes makes our text somewhat inaccurate, so it is worth checking before posting. You may be very experienced in giving commands to computers , so will appreciate accuracy in coding.
You should always place a small (10nF) capacitor on ADC inputs to micros to give something to charge up and dominate the internal sample and hold circuit capacitance. What you get is the result seen here if you don't.
Another nice video. Great to show basic control to people. Thank you again for sharing.
Good job! You just demonstrated common problem with potentiometers... they decay with age and add noise but even new ones do that. Thats why audiophile way is to replace it with ladder resistor switch.. but for your project all you need is a small capacitor in paralell across potentiometer mid and side pin and current limiting resistor in series to the gpio pin.. that would remove high frequency noise.
I like how you programmed the raspberry pi pico on a raspberry pi 400. Free from x86 system!
I'm getting a Pi3B+ Soon, so I can tinker around with the GPIO ports, gonna watch those GPIO /Pi vids from your channel a lot now!
Really great video Chris, i have been trying to teach my son about pulse modulation but I failed to get his attention, today he sat down and watched you video and now we are breaking out the pi zero wh connected to a breadboard and a couple of servos, he is trying different code as I type this.
I have not got a pico yet preferring to ssh onto the zero.
We both wondered with the earlier powering a pi from a 12v lead acid battery and today having analogue inputs and servos. Perhaps an explaining computers, robot or weather monitoring station would be a nice combination of the two episodes.
Thanks for this. I have a video on using servos with a standard Pi here: ua-cam.com/video/xHDT4CwjUQE/v-deo.html I also did two videos on a weather station using a Pi earlier this year, first one here: ua-cam.com/video/ChQpD2gsC20/v-deo.html -- and second (where I build an anemometer) here: ua-cam.com/video/1LPEPZ02-t8/v-deo.html But there will be more projects . . .
I hope Mr Scissors and Stanley are fine and aren't jealous of Pico & Servo (the dynamic duo)
They are doing OK -- and will return! :)
Great video Chris, as always. I now use CircuitPython on any microcontroller that supports it. I moved away from raw MicroPython except on something like an ESP32 that doesn't support CircuitPython. On the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip boards there is a great PIOASM assembler that can run out of the box via CircuitPython. The latest version of Thonny does a very good job using MicroPython and CircuitPython boards.
Brilliant introduction to micropython and programming with the Pico! Really excited for my Picos to arrive in a few weeks, it’s a far cry from my assembly code days with the 8051.
4:20 Christopher dismantled radios when he was 12. Colour me surprised. 😜 Another quality video, thanks.
Thanks! Fantastic explanation and demonstration!
Thanks for your support, most appreciated.
Happy Sunday everyone!!
Greetings!
I had to look up the previous part as I didn't remember this, it was a month ago. Perhaps publish these parts closer together?
I had no idea at the time that a second part was going to be published. I try to keep a variety of content here. Most of my videos also pick up most of their views many months and years after posting, so a few weeks "delay" is not that significant for most viewers. :)
Thank you for making Sundays fun again!
Love this. İt's a perfect introduction to the kinds of things one imagines doing with a Pico. I did a show and tell video last week at work about the Pico but I should just have played this :)
Your sense of humor kills me!!!
So, I don't know if someone already mentioned it, but the issue with the jitter on the servo wasn't caused because your potentiometer was 40 years old, but rather on the fact that the 16 bits of the ADC are not "all useful" in this scenario. You only use the entire ADC resolution to average its value on most cases, or you can discard 1, 2 or 3 bits out of it as well. I know there are some cases where you can just use the entire range, but that's also paired with an analog front end circuitry on the ADC, with matched impedances, and not a single pot connected to it.
What I would suggest is to add a capacitor (100nF or so) between the output of the potentiometer and ground, and also average (or directly discard 2 or 3 bits) the raw ADC samples.
This could headline a "demystifying servos" playlist! Also, mad props for the efficient code: I'm about to jump ship from the HMS C++ to the HMS Python. Thanks for another great video!
It would be a very short playlist unless you started getting into more complex servos like ones with higher accuracy, force feedback etc.
Great video, a lot happing for such few lines of code. I'm new to the Pico so I've binged a lot of videos on the Pico! One problem I had with the SG90 was it going beyond the 180 degree mark which resulted in it shaking and heating up. After adding and displaying the 'value' variable to make it visible in the shell, I could find the value that took the servo beyond the 180 and created an if statement to limit the range of the value. It did work, although there was a region of the pot that didn't work. Will study PWM and Duty cycle for a deeper understanding of the code.
It was nice to finally meet Mr. Pot.
It might be too much for UA-cam but,
I'd love to see an explanation of a Pico (ideally a pair or n of them) hosting finite state machines interacting with a state machine on a host computer. In addition to or alternatively, having the Pico report state (ie. location, temp or the output of an "instrument") would be awesome.
Really enjoy your series as do my son and grandson.
Very good professor. I enjoyed this so much. I like the comments and explanations of the code along with the diagrams. Superb
Many thanks!
Good stuff. Reminds me of learning electronics back in the 1980's. The devices were bigger and a lot less integrated, but with a couple of dozen chips we could do the same thing. :-)
For the Servo jittering issue, easiest fix would just be to round to nearest 100, you can clearly see in the video that the jittery-ness of the values only fluctuates 100 values or so.
Edit, The jittering output would make a pretty cool random string generator: sha256 the string of input^input.
Smashing. I particularly like the pot controlling the servo, to turn a tuning capacitor in a magnetic loop antenna.
Thanks again Chris, always looking forward to your videos, very informative and useful information brought to us in the usual colourful manner we like.
Picos are an ideal companion to a Pi computer, as they are much better at connecting to physical devices than the GPIO on a Pi is. My current project uses a Pi 3B with a touch screen for controlling a Pico that will have a motor driver, servos and a stepper motor attached. I'll probably use I2C for communication, but haven't got that far yet. The Pi will give me remote control through Wi-Fi, Ethernet or Bluetooth, including the potential to stream video so I can see what I'm controlling remotely!
Very educational! Nice change to the usual SBC-stuff! This stuff encourages me to learn & experiment a bit with the pico and RPi sbc's. Keep up the good work!
Regards,
Willem
Thanks Chris. Looking forward to PiPico projects.
Thanks for your videos. I have enjoyed them for a while.
Vintage pot and vintage breadboard (like many I own) with a dignified aged cream color from the original white.
Thanks Chris, love the videos on the pico.
It’s fired up my interest in microcontroller projects again 👍.
You did inputs and now outputs, what’s next?
Hahahaaa.. Zebras & Giraffes.. you're mad as a box of frogs 😄👌 That's why your content is complete Gold-Dust. For me and the kids I work with. Got our Picos 2day.
Thanks a million Christopher 🙏✨
Chris great tutorial! Just what I needed to help me get the basics down so I can complete a project that I have been working on. Once again, Thank you!!!!
Good luck with your project. :)
Nice tutorial! I've done this type of thing in "C" using an Arduino, but I've never used Python, and have always wondered if it would be easier. This gave me a nice comparison of the two languages. Very nice, thank you.
I have a project on the go to connect multiple Picos using the RFM69HCW radios (not the LoRa variants). The libraries for these radios are only available in C (they be available in CircuitPython but I believe CP doesn't support interupts, which my project needs), so I went down the C++ route a couple of months ago using the Pico SDK and Visual Studio Code. It was an absolute nightmare to setup and get working on W10 (UA-cam was my friend here), and is pretty cumbersome to use. In the last month or so RP2040 support became available on the Arduino IDE which I have briefly used just to test that it works. If the radio libraries were available to Micro Python I'd use that in a heartbeat. So much easier to use, and TBH I wouldn't miss the greater (much greater) efficiency of C++ on this project.
@@skf957 The advantage of C is speed of execution. C is *compiled* whereas Python is *interpreted.
@@lesliedeana5142 Yes, thanks. And I like what I’ve seen of C++. Its relative inaccessibility (on the Pico at least) appeals to my inner geek/snob, it seems to be extremely feature-rich, and as you say, is fast in execution. But, and I am no expert here, Python and Micro Python, far from being the modern day equivalent of BASIC (and that wasn’t THAT bad), are also feature-rich and really nice languages to use.
I love your videos. So clearly explained.
Like your programing details, you would be a good teacher!
Brilliant video, Chris. I’ve been programming on the Pico since February. I like the simplicity of Micro Python, but I’ve been using the C SDK for maximum speed.
So for some that has used both, what's the speed difference?
Bad typing - "some" was supposed to be "someone".
Great video on the Pi Pico... love the code and applications. Your old wire wound potentiometer is potentially causing the jitter in values... maybe time for a potential upgrade.
High quality video, as you always do.
The feature I find most interesting (and innovative) is the PIO, the set of state machine which can emulate peripherals (or make new ones).
I hope you are looking at exploring the PIO.
Do you know whether there is a compiler from C/C++ to the assembly language of the PIO?
Very interesting and educational, as always.
Informative and very well timed, I'm learning and experimenting at the moment with controlling a matrix of LEDs with the ultimate aim of making a unique animated clock. You gave some handy programming tips, especially controlling i/o from an array.
Very clearly explained - useful. To fix the jittering pot, could you average-out the readings? For example, read 5 readings into an array, add them together, divide by 5. It'd make things a little more complicated, though - perhaps better to just replace the pot - although as other comments have mentioned, the varying readings could be in the ADC, and not the pot.
I'm not sure the age of that potentiometer is solely responsible for the "jitter." I think all potentiometers have a bit of jitter in them -- much like all switches have a bit of "bounce" where it switches rapidly on and off as you close or open the switch. I'm sure you could write some code to "de-jitter" that pot -- maybe something where it examines the previous value and if it's within a certain %, don't change the value being sent?
Obviously that's more work than what's needed in this video -- you were trying to prove a concept, not build a working machine. This was lots of fun to watch. Nice to know about all the stuff these GPIO pins can do. Thanks!
I had a pico and servo lying around. Was thinking to use an ESP32 for the motors but this is great. Thanks for the video :D
Thanks Chris. Good old school carbon potentiometers. They give free snap crackle on pop on my old valve (tube) wireless.
I added this video to 7 of my playlists (LOL). I guess it applies to many of my interests.
:)
Great video, very concise explanation, great reference. I love the Pico!
Very very nice - I feel jealous, that already not young, It's so helpful for all who likes electronic.
PS Chris - you are ready to make your own HVAC DDC for your home.
Nice! You can clearly see that the potentiometer is of the logarithmic type ;)
As always another great video, and thanks for the information.
It sure beats working on the servos on my old US Navy ship.😀
I am later than some but still can watch this in the first hour.
I wonder what would be the grand scheme of all those gadgets that you are testing.
I finally got my daily dopamine rush. Thanks
This was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you, sir!
I'm sure you'd have the same problem with a new potentiometer too. It's a noise issue in my opinion. A capacitor across the wiper to ground would probably sort that out.
ExplainingComputers is Concise and Clear as always! :)
The servo jitter can indeed be reduced as Roger Froud pointed out using a capacitor to dampen the noise. Probably the best way. Yet, while the best software is hardware, I would still add a software value damper to the while loop which averages out the values as a fail safe.
@@TriAngles3D Exactly. My professor was teaching us these concepts but with push buttons. Called 'Debouncing', he showed us both the hardware and software way. He insisted that we use the software way though. :-)
Another fantastic video Sir thank you very much.
Another amazing video Chris. Thank you and keep up the great work!!
Your a great teacher. Very cool
Nice video. Love micro controllers.
hi chris. excelen job as usual. just wanted to suggest idea for episode and that is that several days ago was put out port of open-source proxmox or bare-metal (type 1) hypervisor for raspberry pi. I think it would make great episode to show how with it, raspberry and couple of external disk you could now make your own small private server and run several services and/or distros at the same time. maybe even show how to install it on pc too and make a small cluster. you can find it in reddit section for proxmox and github under pimox (I would put links to them but I know that youtube would automatically delete my post so...)
Your jittering servo / pot input value was more likely noise induced in the input from the servo motor brushes or the pi itself than a dirty pot. Decoupling the power to the servo either with a separate supply or simply a .1uf capacitor across the supply pins would probably fix the issue. The same can be done across the pot. Dirty pots typically go open to the wiper briefly then back to their positional value, often very quickly but the result is a more random noisy signal.
Beautifully explained sir... i have seen some of your tutorials and they are well explained. I have subscribed your channel. Teach us more..😊👍🏻👍🏻
The jittering may be not the old pot but the self noise of the ADC or to be more precise it‘s reference voltage caused by the switching regulator. I have read that you can reduce adc noise in software by pulling up that pin to VCC
very nice video
i obtained new imaginations while i watch this video
:)
You could write code to filter out the jitter, Just average the last 50 ish potentiometer inputs before the current one and average it then add maybe 5%. If the new value is not a greater difference, continue to return the same value. If it is different, write it to a variable for the current servo position .., and it keeps sending the same value to the PWM u til significant change
What a brilliantly comprehensive video. Bravo sir! Although we now know your age. ;)