SGV Linux Users Group - The Trouble with Rovers

Lan and Roger will be giving a preview of our SCaLE 17x talk about the SGVHAK Rover. Any feedback will be extremely helpful. We'll also be talking about SCaLE, volunteering for SCaLE, and plans for our booth at SCaLE.

Dinner begins around 7pm and the presentation will start after most people have received their food or 8pm, whichever comes first. Buying dinner is optional.

"The Trouble with Rovers"

The JPL Open Source Rover is a relatively inexpensive and accessible project for high school and college classes to exercise mechanical and electronics and software engineering using parts that could be easily sourced from hobbyist stores.

JPL beta-tested their build instructions at a few schools and with the SGVHAK maker group. The ultimate goal was to refine the build instructions and grow a community of experienced builders to help provide support once the rover documentation and code were open sourced.

https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover

We will go over the experience of the SGVHAK maker group in building the SGVHAK rover and being inspired to build rovers of our own design. The SGVHAK maker group built the rover over the period of 3 months while giving JPL significant feedback and build photos. We diverged from the original design most significantly in the wheel design, motor selection, and software.

We were able to exhibit the SGVHAK rover at SCALE, the Caltech Science for March, and the DTLA Mini Maker Faire. We were recently interviewed for the Command_Line Heroes podcast. Building rovers is a never-ending process. The SGVHAK rover itself is always under construction. We have plans to add a robot arm, pan-tilt webcam, and maybe even lidar. Our members have already started coming up with their own rover designs and builds. All the code and 3D printer files are on GitHub. Come join us in our rover-building adventures.

About Lan
Lan Dang is an Operations Engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, specializing in science data systems operations and large scale data processing. Her contributions to open source focus on community-building and evangelism. In her spare time, she is active in the San Gabriel Valley tech community as a leader of the SGVLUG and its sister group, the SGVHAK hardware hacking group, mentors new hires at work as well as local high school and college students, and volunteers with various STEAM groups and events. She is the volunteer coordinator for the SCALE A/V team.

About Roger
An active member of the San Gabriel Valley Hardware Hackers group (SGVHAK) and member of Linux User's Group (SGVLUG) Roger is interested in many topics around the intersection of mechanical hardware and intelligent software.

About the SGVLUG

SGVLUG is one of the oldest and most active Linux User Groups in the Greater Los Angeles area. In addition to Linux, the group also shares interests in other free and open source software, all forms of technology, and the discussion of issues that arise with the these new tools, such as privacy rights. SGVLUG attracts members from throughout LA County including Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, and eastward throughout the San Gabriel Valley. Our members include software developers, system administrators, hardware engineers, and software users of all levels of experience. Many work in the technology field as employees, contractors or consultants, and enjoy the learning and networking opportunities available from the group. We also have many members that serve as volunteers of their time and skills at various local events, including the annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE).