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Watney is a low-cost 3D-printable FPV rover

Watney is a low-cost Raspberry Pi-enabled rover made of readily available parts. The majority of Watney’s parts are 3D-printable. It has a Python and a REST APIs. Watney is all-wheel drive, with each side powered by a geared motor. Because of that, it turns like a tank by spinning each side in opposite directions. It drives best on smooth surfaces, like hardwood, linoleum and tile. For carpeted surfaces, Watney can do “soft turns”, by spinning one side forward and the other alternating backwards and forwards.

The software part of Watney makes it a webcam on wheels. The camera feed is low-latency HD and rover control is accessible via a browser.

The HD camera feed is provided by rpi-webrtc-streamer.

Upon startup, Watney will detect if it’s connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot. If not, it will host its own hotspot “Watney4”. Once you connect to the hotspot, you can control it directly by going to http://192.168.4.1:5000, or connect it to a Wi-Fi hotspot by going to http://192.168.4.1. For advanced Wi-Fi setup, you can ssh to 192.168.4.1 (default credentials pi / watney4) and edit wpa_supplicant.conf directly.

Wi-Fi configuration is provided by Raspberry Pi Turnkey”

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