Wiring
Pi to driver to motors, one shared ground
Hackathon Fall 2026
A Raspberry Pi 5 robot, driven from a laptop, that moves, turns, explores, speaks, and senses.
arpitran/hackathon-fall-2026
The idea
Plan
| # | Milestone | Status |
|---|---|---|
| M0 | Prep: order parts, bring up the Pi 5 | in progress |
| M1 | Eyes on the Pi: person detection on the board | todo |
| M2 | Hello GPIO: blink an LED, read a button | todo |
| M3 | Wheels: Car class + drive CLI | todo |
| M4 | Laptop control: FastAPI + WebSocket + watchdog | todo |
| M5 | Sentry vision: live stream with person boxes | todo |
| M6 | Stretch: voice or obstacle sensing | todo |
| M7 | Demo video + docs | todo |
Hardware
Raspberry Pi 5 with active cooler
L298N driver, BO motors and wheels, separate 4×AA battery pack (6V)
Logitech USB webcam
USB speaker (the Pi 5 has no 3.5mm jack)
Doubled cardboard chassis, caster wheel, breadboard for prototyping
Wiring
Vision
A YOLO11n detector runs on webcam frames with tracking and a live FPS counter. It is the base for the sentry view in M5.
uv run --extra vision detect-people
Demo
Drive the car from the laptop, watch the person boxes.
Fallback: recorded demo video
Next