gwiz

September 2025: Head Down Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update, I struggled for a bit to pick a title for this edition due to the range of robotic things I have done over the last month. I have certainly spent a lot of time doing robotics.

Gwiz Update
I have only spent a few hours on the Gwiz, I am trying to work out which batteries are still iffy. I have also installed a battery meter and a 10″ Android headunit which I hope to be able to deploy my own apps to. This allow me to record driving data etc.

Afobot
Back when I bought my 17 Sanbot Elf robots, I was also given 40 (ish) Afobot robots. These are little desktop based things with a screen that can move side to side and up and down. They run Android 7 and initial investigations seemed like they had no SDK and no real use. However with the help of ChatGPT, I managed to write some code to control the motors. Next plan is to connect it to my websockets project and support teleop.

ROS2, the Rover Robot and the Robotic Arms
So I have continued to learn ROS2, overcoming some headaches etc. I still need to learn more, however the knowledge is slowly sinking in. One awesome thing I did get going was simulating the Inmoov robot in Rviz2 and Gazebo. This was super cool but nearly broke my brain. A lot more work needs to be done but its a positive start.

I also built a setup so that I could place a LEGO brick and my robotic arm would pick it up (myCobot 280)

Inmoov Update
As for the Inmoov humanoid robots, I am preparing 2 of them for a show this Month. In preparing Robob, its arm snapped off which I have now rebuilt. Robob and Reggie both run off a Raspberry Pi 5 now and I am working on making them more portable. I have not done any more work on the 3rd robot, but do plan to.

Burf.co
So, I have turned off the Burf.co Search Engine for the moment to help me focus on the future which at the moment is robotics. I want to get my own teleop robotic service going and so need to focus. The site has also moved to faster hosting (Thanks Adrian).

Reviewing the Plan
I am super keen to focus on the plan I set out last month, so lets see if I have helped towards it, or as usual got sidetracked.

Create a Sanbot Remote Control App

  • Design a controller that streams all sensor data from the Sanbot to a user interface, allowing remote movement and activation of functions.

So I have created a prototype Android app and Python script that streams sensor data including camera to a server from a Sanbot. I can also move the robot and make it speak. Next I want to be able to support multiple robots and control head/arm movement.

Continue to deepen my ROS2 knowledge

  • Fix bugs around MyCobot280/xArm hardware, so that API works well
  • Finish self-driving course on Udemy
  • Understand SLAM and mapping better so that a robot can travel between rooms
  • Add IMU support

I have continued to increase my ROS2 knowledge and am progressing with the MyCobot Arm and the self driving course. For work I have written a cool script that can control the robotic arm to pickup a LEGO brick.

Continue Developing the InMoov Humanoids

  • Have an active one for improving Vision and LLM use. Think about using a Neural Net to give personality. Think about gestures.
  • Create a mobile Inmoov robot, even if its remote
  • Consider merging this with the Sanbot remote control app

At the moment, I am focusing on getting the Inmoov robots ready for a show, however in doing so I am improving them. With the ROS2 Inmoov work happening, this only improves my likelihood of doing more ROS2 and Inmoov work.

Have Fun with the G-Wiz

  • Design a remote-control system (concept-only for now)
  • Add sensors and record journey data
  • Use that data in a self-driving AI test
  • Explore ROS integration for car control

Some small steps made by adding the Android headunit, I have lots of ideas here but mainly focusing on the fun side.

It generally looks like I have stayed on track which is good news, I hope the October update shows equal or even more progress.

The Wednesday Update: Goodbye Gwiz

Posted on by burf2000

So welcome to another Wednesday update, stuff is actually starting to move along again!

Gwiz Update

So due to having too many projects on the go and lack of time, the Gwiz has been sold. I really enjoyed getting the car up and running but I couldn’t warrant the monthly cost (insurance wasn’t that cheap) and I can still do a self-driving project, just at a smaller scale!

Electronics Course

This has stalled a bit which is always bad when doing a course as you start forgetting what you have learned. However once I complete the main printing of the Inmoov robot, this will continue.

Inmoov Robot

So my main focus has been the Inmoov Robot and trying to fix the main lower structure that partially cracked. If this had gone (turns out it was far off) the robot would of fallen off the stand and smashed. That would not be a good day! I have also done some work on the arm which until the servo bicep holder broke, would of been complete

Turned out one of the main base plate was also damaged but this would be a complete rebuild, so I glued it.
This was printed in PLA which over time has been brittle
The orange bicep servo holder that snapped

Exercise

So I have started mountain biking quite a bit and have now got a nice (but old) full suspension bike. Today I also ran 3 miles on the treadmill and nearly died lol. I would like to get some fitness back as it helps me mentally with these sorts of projects.

The Wednesday Update: The Missing Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Wednesday update, I know it’s been nearly a month since I did an update, and even that update was a bit thin with content.

The Kitchen aka the excuse

So nothing to do with robotics but the main reason I have done very little in the way of tech. My entire kitchen, dining room, and downstairs bathroom have been replaced including removing a wall which resulted in a lot of work, a lot of mess, and a lot of noise. This basically stopped me from doing anything interesting as after I would finish work on a Wednesday I was cleaning, moving stuff, or helping the builders who were friends of mine. They did an epic job however I think I will be cleaning for a very long time. At the same time, I also had my windows replaced.

Inmoov Robot

So a month on and it’s hard to remember what I was doing, I have made some progress with the Inmoov Robot which is good. I have nearly finished the second arm however one of the main bottom supports (which connects the robot to the chair pole) is now damaged which is not good! This will be quite a lot of work to sort out however if I don’t, the robot is likely to fall over and smash.

Gwiz

Nothing really has happened with this, I still want to see if I can make it drive itself.

Electronics course

I have made a bit of progress on this and passed the second test (barely due to the gap between lessons). I hope to complete this by next week

Hosting for Burf.co

So after some social media feedback to HostPapa, a new member of staff has been trying to help me lower the concurrency issues with my site (Entry Points). I still find this a terrible way to do business (unlimited everything as long as it comes in single-file) as that’s not the way the internet works. I did actually check CPU and Memory usage and it was barely anything!

The Wednesday Update: Mission Accomplished

Posted on by burf2000

Welcome to another Wednesday update, again a rare edition that’s actually on Wednesday! A bit less on content this week due to it being my kid’s half term!

GWiz Update

The mission was always to make it to my Partner’s house in Sandhurst, and guess what it did it! No issues at all, max out about 45mph but I think it has more in it!

I have 1 small issue to sort with the GWiz, when breaking the re-gen system causes a burst of over 70v to the controller which causes the car to shut down. It’s a simple setting to change but needs a special cable.

Vex Tank

So on Tuesday, I wanted to start prototyping a simple tank to use as a platform for outside. It took about 2 hours to build and works pretty well until it got to the brick test. I think I am going to make a slightly larger more powerful one. At the same time, I want to test it again on a similar platform with different types of wheels (e.g Omni) which will hopefully give me some evidence on what works best out on the pavements.

ROS Lidar Robot

So I managed to get part of my old VEX ROS lidar robot working, I had missed out on some key bits of information in the readme but managed to get parts of it working. This was a great learning platform for ROS as it was purely built from the ground up by myself. The teleops control worked to control it, the Lidar also worked, the only issue was a lot of Errors were generated

Holiday

On a short holiday with my dad to Welles and Cheddar, I managed to get an Anki Overdrive set from a charity shop, this was awesome in its day and uses AI to drive the cars.

The Wednesday Update: Gwiz Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Welcome to another Wednesday update, this one is full of achievements!! Hold on to your pants!!!

The Gwiz in all its glory!

The Gwiz did a hill!

To make sure I can drive the Gwiz to my partners’ house I needed to check it would get up a rather steep hill. It’s not very long but is quite steep. I took a run-up and managed to get to the top of it at just under 30mph.

The Gwiz hit 45mph!

Erm, I would not recommend this, it’s rather scary, imagine being in a cardboard box and thinking you may crash into a wall at high speed. It’s very noisy and very bouncy.

The Giwz overtook a skateboarder

Well, he wasn’t going very fast but made me laugh!

The Gwiz did a shopping trip!!!

Yup the car has now done something actually useful, I mean it has cost me hundreds of pounds to get to this point but I can now make it to Morrisons.

I feel that the Gwiz has achieved a lot and only had one issue which I think is an overvoltage issue

VEX Robotics

So I had a bit of spare time during the week and managed to fire up my VEX V5 and VEX IQ robotics kit and get them set up to be useful. My aim is to use VEX EDR or V5 to control the Gwiz.

VEX V5 is pretty cool and even features a camera for tracking objects

ROS and Turtlebot

I also managed to fire up my old ROS (Robotics Operating System) Turlebot robot which is super cool. It has all sorts of sensors like a Kinetic type sensor for camera and depth detection, bumper sensors, and ultrasonics. This is the perfect robot to learn ROS on. It’s powered by a Nvidia TK1 so can do a lot of machine learning.

This is a point cloud of the back of me

MakeBlock CyberPi Go Kit

Electronics Course

And to make the evenings on the sofa even more exciting I have started the electronics course on Udemy that’s is on my to-do list.

The Wednesday Update: The Sunny Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Welcome to another Wednesday update and boy has the weather been great the last 5 days. Compared to the usual rain we had for a good few weeks, the weather has been epic!

Gwiz update
Stuff has happened, the big thing being that I have now ordered brand new (yes actually new) batteries for it. I have gone with some 100AH deep cycle Hankook DC31. I will be running around 65 volts which does make the Gwiz shift a bit! They should arrive ready for the weekend 🙂

Inmoov Robotic Head update

Well, this has started to look pretty cool now that I have tidied up the internals. I have mounted the amplifier, sound level PCB, and other things. I need to reprint the top part of the skull

I think I have got this to a great place. I do want to add a camera to it but to mount that onto the Pi will be a massive challenge. I also need to fix the Burf.co chat API as it’s dying badly. I would also like the Python script to autostart when the head is turned for all of the speech, TTS and API services.

Burf.co : Goodbye server!

So do not run random Linux scripts on a live server from the internet lol. I completely removed SUDO permissions from my box, 1.2 terabytes of data lost! It was a bad day, I was multitasking badly and paid the price. I managed to rebuild the server rather quickly (2 hours) however the main index data will take ages to get back. I like to see this huge mess up as an opportunity to do something different so watch this space!

Review

Let’s see how I am actually doing against the plan, I had a few lost sessions due to house improvements and covid, but how am I doing against the list

List from February

  • Math : Learn Algebra and kinematic (Little progress made)
  • Finish Introducing Robotics  (Done)
  • Start and Finish Robotic Vision: Principles of Vision (Scrapped as very old)
  • Finish Artificial Intelligence for Robotics : This is the self driving course I really want to do but needs maths. (Not started yet)
  • Give a good shot to Machine Learning by Andrew NG : A very famous ML course (Not started yet)
  • Get Robotic head talking and listenering (Done, will go further)
  • Do something useful with Gwiz (Progressing)
  • Finish Electronics course (Not started yet)
  • Start and finish Self driving course using deep learning (Not started yet)
  • Build/use already built little robot to do maze solving work (Little progress made)
  • Finish Robotic Diploma (Missed off list but was important) (Done)
  • Finish Inmoov Robot (Missed off list but is very important) (Progressing)

I find it very odd how I missed the Robotics Diploma and finishing the Inmoov Robot (full size) off the main list as these are actually more important than most of the other things.

So 3 things done, 1 scrapped (it was mentioned in a previous post why), 2 processing well, and 5 academic courses to start. Seeing as it’s 3 months in, I think that is actually good progress.

The Wednesday Update: The Speed Edition!

Posted on by burf2000

So another Wednesday update! This time, we have hit unprecedented speeds!

Gwiz Update: 65 volts of pure madness

Yup, I hit 34MPH in this bad boy uphill, I think any faster and I would need to change my pants. It does become apparent that maybe the brakes need upgrading! The next test is to take it out onto normal roads!

Inmoov head update

I have now started moving the electronics into the skull so that it is more self-contained. I personally think it’s looking pretty awesome. Once I have wired in the speakers I will be able to get it to talk and listen to commands.

Education

Still progressing with Introduction to Machine Learning however I wanted to focus on actually building stuff this week

Misc

I bought a cheap old robotic hover this week after the Rodney Brooks podcast that I recommended last week. I found it really interesting to see how it behaved and plotted its paths around my downstairs. It only has basic sensors (no Lidar) but it was really interesting. My son Max also found it rather interesting and spent 30 minutes playing with it.