I do think the mechanical and electrical aspects of robotics (ie the mechatronics) are ignored or glazed over when teaching robotics, especially through simulation. One has a new appreciation for how wheels roll on carpet once they try to implement a control / path planning algorithm on a real robot in their living room! It would be valuable to gain these "appreciations" by learning robotics more intimately with real robots.
@ncmncm Thx for the comment. Yes ROS 2 is the robot operating system v2 - www.ros.org - which is historically a challenge to interface with uC's, hence the post share. I'm trying to build a cheap platform for people to learn ROS (2) and robotics hence the interest in using cheap (yet capable) uC's like the ESP32.
The example actually does use HW timers to blink the LED from a ROS message.
The short elevator pitch in my "unofficial" over-simplified own words - "ROS is framework to program complex robotics applications that encourages modularity and shareability of modules. ROS is to robotics development what Django/Rails is to web development."
ROS2 is version 2 of the original ROS framework.
As a results of the ROS framework, a number of modules (packages in ROS-talk) for complex robotics algorithms, functionality has been implemented by companies / the community and shared among each other.
For instance, Hadabot reuses the Navigation package (along with many others) that has been pre-impremented which allows me to employ many robotics functionalities without having to re-invent the wheel.
This is exactly what I'm trying to address with Hadabot. A systematic / opinionated way to learn ROS (specifically ROS 2), understand its significance, in a hands-on manner, with a real robot. The next milestone for Hadabot is a very simple introductory ROS robotics curriculum / syllabus that is not as intimidating as a MOOC, requires low mental load to get started and reach various milestones. Lots of hard work ahead to get this right! Don't hesitate to reach out w thoughts and opinions - jack AT hadabot DOT com - Jack