I am a mechanical engineering student currently working on a capstone project using the SparkFun JetBot AI Kit v3.0.
I would like to confirm the compatibility of the v3.0 kit with the official NVIDIA JetBot GitHub repository (NVIDIA-AI-IOT/jetbot). Specifically, I have the following questions:
Does the v3.0 kit fully support the motor control and basic functions provided by the NVIDIA-AI-IOT/jetbot library without any major code modifications (e.g., I2C address changes)?
Are the motor drivers used in v3.0 (TI DRV8830) identical to those in v2.0 in terms of software interfacing with the official library?
Our team wants to ensure we are using the most standard hardware environment for our waste classification AI project.
I am currently using the SparkFun JetBot AI Kit v3.0 (Jetson Nano). I am writing to report a persistent terminal freezing issue when attempting to control the motors.
Initially, I tried to operate the robot using the standard JetBot library, but it did not function as expected. Consequently, I attempted to control the motors directly using the qwiic_scmd library.
The specific issue is as follows:
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The first execution of the motor control code usually works.
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However, upon the second execution, the terminal becomes completely unresponsive (freezes).
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Even after stopping the process with sudo killall -9 python3, the driver often fails to initialize, and the is_connected() check sometimes fails to find the I2C address 0x5d.
I have confirmed that i2cdetect -y 1 shows the address 5d before I run the scripts. Currently, I am powering the Jetson Nano via the DC power jack.
Could you please clarify if this freezing is caused by I2C bus instability or a power shortage when the motors draw current from the Jetson Nano’s GPIO? Also, would you recommend using a separate battery for the motor driver’s VIN/GND to resolve this?
Does power cycling the motor driver change the behavior?
How is everything wired? Maybe share photos
If using our included lipo, be sure to use the more powerful port to power the gamut
The motors and the motor driver are connected via jumper wires, and the motor driver is connected to the pHat board using jumper wires as well. Additionally, the OLED panel is linked to both the pHat board and the motor driver.
