Drive a single DotBot

Build and flash one DotBot and a gateway, cable them to your computer, and drive the bot from the web UI. This is the smallest real-hardware setup. For the no-hardware path, use the simulator instead.

Building firmware needs SEGGER Embedded Studio and nrfjprog (see the README prerequisites). To skip building, fetch a pre-built release with dotbot fw fetch -f <version> and flash those artifacts instead.

1. Build and flash the DotBot

The DotBot v3 is an nRF5340, which has two cores - the application core (your app) and the network core (the radio) - so you build and flash two images:

# build the bare dotbot apps into the cache (needs SEGGER Embedded Studio)
dotbot fw artifacts --app dotbot
dotbot fw artifacts --app nrf5340_net --target nrf5340dk-net
# cable-flash to the bot whose J-Link serial starts with 77
dotbot device flash dotbot -s 77                        # app core
dotbot device flash nrf5340_net -b nrf5340dk-net -s 77  # network core

2. Build and flash the gateway

The gateway is a dev board (e.g. an nRF52840-DK) plugged into your computer; it bridges the robot’s radio to USB serial.

dotbot fw artifacts --app dotbot_gateway --target nrf52840dk
# cable-flash to the DK whose J-Link serial starts with 10
dotbot device flash dotbot_gateway -b nrf52840dk -s 10

3. Drive it from the web UI

With the gateway plugged in, point the controller at its serial port and open the web UI:

dotbot run controller --conn /dev/ttyACM0 -w  # serial gateway; no swarm-id needed

Select the bot in the browser and steer it with the joystick. See the controller + web UI guide for the full UI tour, and fw / device for the firmware commands.

Next

• Operate many bots over the air - the swarm reference.

• Add real-world positions - LH2 calibration over a cable (or over the air once you’ve provisioned a swarm).