Can BrickPi be programmed from Matlab/Simulink to control LEGO NXT sensors and motors?

Hi, Has anyone tried controlling LEGO NXT sensors and motors via BrickPi over Raspberry Pi 3's on-board WiFi? BrickPi is essentially an expansion board to Raspberry Pi: https://www.dexterindustries.com/BrickPi/.

BrickPi officially does not support Matlab/Simulink yet. I am wondering if anyone can point me to relevant resources to help figure out how to access and control these motors and sensors. Thanks, Gautam

[René van der Meer]

Gautum, this is a very good idea! I would love to use this as well. I hope that someone already has done this. Otherwise would could start with the Dexter SW?

Answer 1

[Jannik Hahn]

Hi Gautam,

maybe a bit late, but you can use the "Simulink Support Package for Raspberry Pi Hardware" and control the motors and sensors via SPI. I actually use the "SPI Master Transfer" and extract the needed inputs from the c++ libraries provided by Dexters BrickPi3-master.

Cheers Jannik

[Ali Parsai]

Hi Jannik,

Do you happen to have some examples of this? I'm looking into doing the same and I'm not sure where to start.

[Jannik Hahn]

Hello Ali,

I uploaded some Simulink example-files right here: https://github.com/JHahnUniKassel/BrickPi_simulink

I just needed the ev3_gyro and nxt_ultrasonic sensors so theses are the only implemented. If you need some more, look at my matlab class I wrote here: https://github.com/JHahnUniKassel/BrickPi_Matlab

In BrickPi.m you can uncomment line 370 to see what some more out going SPI-Commands are. Take the needed command and feed it into some SPI-MasterTransfer.

Cheers Jannik

[Ali Parsai]

Hello Jannik,

Thanks very much! This is extremely helpful and saved me a lot of trouble. I'm working on a library to support all the sensors and motors in simulink and I'm using some of your code. I'm going to release everything as GNU GPL later on, but for that I need to know what the license for your code is. Would you mind adding a license file to your repositories? This might be useful for someone else later as well.

[Jannik Hahn]

Hi Ali,

nice to hear the files helped. I added a license file to Git - hope its alright now. Keep us up to date with your library soon its done.

Jannik

[Gautam Goel]

Jannik

Thank you very much. I am excited to try this out.

Gautam

[Jannik Hahn]

Hi Ali,

how is the progress?

Jannik