rlboids is a project in (very early) development to build "real life" boids with small, inepxensive rovers.

A controller is a Raspberry Pi with an attached camera that monitors the field of boids using AprilTag, and an Adafruit Feather RP2040 RFM69 which is used to communicate with the individual boids.

Install arduino-cli:

• start with a standard Raspberry Pi OS image
• Install arduino-cli: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/arduino/arduino-cli/master/install.sh | sh
• Add it to the path in .bashrc: export PATH=$PATH:/home/pi/bin
• arduino-cli config init

Add support for the rp2040 board to arduino-cli:

arduino-cli config add board_manager.additional_urls https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico/releases/download/global/package_rp2040_index.json
arduino-cli core update-index
arduino-cli core install rp2040:rp2040

This board is now available as rp2040:rp2040:adafruit_feather_rfm

Install the RadioHead library from AdaFruit's repo: First, edit ~/.arduino15/arduino-cli.yaml and set enable_unsafe_install to true

cd
wget https://github.com/adafruit/RadioHead/archive/master.zip
arduino-cli lib install --zip-path ~/master.zip

Compile the sketch and flash the rp2040:

• Clone this repo.
• cd rlboids
• Compile the sketch: arduino-cli compile --fqbn rp2040:rp2040:adafruit_feather_rfm controller
• Connect the rp2040 to the rpi via USB.
• Get the right port from arduino-cli board list, e.g. /dev/ttyACM0
• Flash: arduino-cli upload -p /dev/ttyACM0 --fqbn rp2040:rp2040:adafruit_feather_rfm controller

Serial monitor: arduino-cli monitor -p /dev/ttyACM01

A boid is a small rover driven by another Feather RP2040 RFM69, which receives position and orientation information from the controller.