Hedgehog Light – A Versatile, White Box Educational Robotics Controller

Architectural Overview and Hedgehog in Use

“…The HWC is implemented as a printed circuit board (PCB) with an STM32F4 microcontroller at its core. [4] A controller is accessed over the network using WiFi or Ethernet, or from the device itself. Programs can be written using a web-based IDE.…”

“…The motor drivers are connected directly to the battery. The HWC contains a buzzer [4]. In addition, the microcontroller's reset and boot pins are connected to the Raspberry Pi, allowing replacement of the firmware using the STM32F4's UART bootloader.…”

“…The SWC also runs the "Hedgehog IDE" web application, which will be available via the node package manager, npm. Furthermore, an STM32F4 toolchain [4] and the Protobuf compiler are installed on the Raspberry Pi, meaning all Hedgehog software can be built and deployed using the controller.…”

“…Protocol messages are encoded and decoded with Protobuf [6]. Both of these libraries are available in many programming languages, allowing for client programs in various languages [4]. Client libraries are intended to follow the philosophy of the language in question so that using Hedgehog, that language can be taught properly.…”

“…An example program using the Python client is shown in Listing 1. There is also a node.js client library, and a Scala/Java library prototype for Android apps, which was used to create a mobile visual programming environment [4].…”