Hi there, I am working on reachy at CoLab and am running into an issue where the shoulder actuators error out quite frequently. However, I can’t find if pyluos or Reachy-python return the Dynamixel status packets, or whether they are stored as state somewhere. It would be very helpful to be able to discern the reason for the failure. As it is, we don’t know if it’s a load issue, or a communications issue, or something else. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi @edj,
Unfortunately, pyluos and the firmware you are using in your modules (Reachy 2019) does not handle status packet and errors.
That’s something that we added in the 2021 version.
Ah, ok. Is it just a matter of reflashing the firmware, or are there hardware updates as well? Has the API changed a lot?
Both, you need to update the firmware of all modules. There is also hardware updates in the head (new cameras, extra fans, etc.). If you want to use only the arms, the update is rather straightforward, for the head it’s more complex.
The API does not change a lot. The main difference is that we improve the overall communication and rely on ROS for the core framework.
Ok, I’ll look into what’s involved in an upgrade. Thanks!
We never managed to get the Orbita built so we actually built a basic pan tilt neck mechanism. We burned out the Luos boards in the head because we looped the power accidentally. So now we control the neck and antennas with an Arduino.
It sounds like upgrading to the new reachy software will work fine since we mainly just use it to control the arms. Do you actually have all the software and firmware files released ready for us to try it?
You should find everything you need in this doc: Arm kit installation process - Reachy 2021
For the firmware, they’re attached to the release here: Releases · pollen-robotics/Luos-modules · GitHub