danielriege / tinycar_lib

host library to control and receive images to/from a tinycar

tinycar_lib

Library to interact with a tinycar over WiFi. It is designed to be a simple and user friendly interface to control the car or receive camera images and telemetry data. It is written in C++ but can be used in Python as well. Please refer to the examples for more information.

Prerequisites:

The C++ library only requires you to have OpenCV installed (not the Python version). In order to use the Python Wrapper however, besides OpenCV you also need:

• numpy (not the Python version)
• cmake

Installation:

When using C++ we recommend to clone this repo as a submodule and include the source files in your project. For a CMakeLists example, refer to the examples.

If you want to use the Python Wrapper, you can install it via pip. This will compile the C++ code and wrap it around a Python module (therefore we need the prerequisites):

pip install git+https://github.com/danielriege/tinycar_lib.git

Example:

C++

#include "tinycar.hpp"

Tinycar car{std::string("HOSTNAME")};
car.setHeadlightOn();

Python

from tinycar import Tinycar

car = Tinycar("HOSTNAME")
car.setHeadlightOn()

Note: In order to receive information from the car (e.g. camera images or telemetry data) you need to call an arbitrary control method (like setHeadlightOn()), so the car knows your IP address and can send you the data. The car uses UDP and a fire-and-forget mechanism, there is no handshake or acknowledgment. But you can call isAlive() which returns true if the car is periodically sending you any data. After sending any control message and isAlive() returns false, you can assume that the car is not reachable.