Try it in the simulator

The simulator runs the full controller and web UI with no hardware - no DotBot, no gateway, no radio. It’s the fastest way to see DotBot work, and because it exposes the exact same REST/WebSocket API as the real controller, code you write against the simulator runs unchanged against real DotBots.

Start it

dotbot run simulator

This opens the web UI at http://localhost:8000/PyDotBot/ driving a simulated swarm. dotbot run simulator is shorthand for dotbot run controller --conn simulator, so everything in the controller + web UI guide applies. Drive the DotBots from the joystick and watch them on the map.

Drive one DotBot in a circle

The simplest demo - it grabs the first DotBot the controller sees and drives it in a circle. With the simulator running, in a second terminal:

dotbot run demo circle

Drive it from your own code

That demo is ~15 lines talking to the controller’s REST API over requests (bundled with pydotbot) - here is the whole thing, a template for your own scripts:

import requests, time

BASE = "http://localhost:8000"
bot = requests.get(f"{BASE}/controller/dotbots").json()[0]["address"]

# roll in a circle for ~5 s - left_y and right_y are the two wheel speeds
for _ in range(50):
    requests.put(f"{BASE}/controller/dotbots/{bot}/0/move_raw",
                 json={"left_x": 0, "left_y": 60, "right_x": 0, "right_y": 30})
    time.sleep(0.1)
requests.put(f"{BASE}/controller/dotbots/{bot}/0/move_raw",
             json={"left_x": 0, "left_y": 0, "right_x": 0, "right_y": 0})

The full surface - every endpoint, the live WebSocket stream, and CSV data logging - is in the REST / WebSocket reference (or the MQTT bridge). A higher-level Python SDK is planned; today you talk to the controller over REST/WebSocket/MQTT.

More examples

dotbot run demo --list   # what's available
dotbot run demo qr       # phone-as-joystick over QrKey

Richer multi-DotBot scenarios - work-and-charge, charging-station, labyrinth, the naming game, motion shapes - live in dotbot/examples/, each with its own README and a simulator init state. They drive the controller over the same REST/WebSocket API shown above, so they run against the simulator or real hardware unchanged.