Balancing

Published on 2023-10-14 in Wee Bug.

I had some time for coding at the hackerspace this week, so I wrote simple code for balancing to test the accelerometer. It goes something like this:

import robot
import time
import lis3dh
import busio
import board


i2c = busio.I2C(sda=board.D4, scl=board.D5, frequency=600000)
accel = lis3dh.LIS3DH(i2c)
height=20

tilt = 0
while True:
    x, y, z = accel.get()
    if x > 500:
        tilt = min(tilt + 20, tilt + 1)
    if x < -500:
        tilt = max(tilt - 20, tilt - 1)
    for leg in robot.LEGS:
        if leg.left:
            leg.move(0, height - tilt)
        else:
            leg.move(0, height + tilt)
    time.sleep(0.05)

Even for simple code like this, the effect is pretty cool:

Of course to make it useful, it has to also work in the other axis, and be integrated with the walking algorithm and others. I have some ideas about how to do it, though, so stay tuned.