Frequently Asked Questions

Note

A must read when something doesn’t work before contacting support :-)

My esieabot shows no sign of life (no light)

Check that the SD card is inserted correctly, in the right direction and before connecting the power.
Check that the SD card is properly burned. If in doubt, follow the steps to re-burn it. Be careful, this will delete the contents of the SD card.
Check that the Raspberry Pi is well powered. If you have a pre-2023 esieabot, you must connect it to USB, no matter the port, on a charged battery, a USB wall charger or a computer. Feel free to test with another micro USB cable. If you have a esieabot 2023 or newer, make sure your power board is powered. You can also try to power your Raspberry Pi directly with a micro USB cable.
Check that the current connections on the GPIOs do not cause a short circuit. If in doubt, unplug everything except the SD card and the power supply.

My esieabot does not move at all with the joystick and the basic program

Check that the SD card is properly burned. If in doubt, follow the steps to re-burn it. Be careful, this will delete the content of the SD card.
Make sure that the controller is plugged into the USB port of the Raspberry Pi before you plug in the power and turn on the esieabot.
Once the Raspberry Pi is started, check that the controller is powered, there should be a red LED.
If you have a pre-2023 esieabot, check that the batteries used to power the motors are fully charged. The battery pack must deliver at least 5V.
If you have a pre-2023 esieabot, check that the connection is exactly the same as in the assembly guide. Be careful to respect the direction of the connections.

My esieabot has only one motor or one direction which works with the basic program

If you have a pre-2023 esieabot, check that the connection is exactly the one of the assembly guide. Be careful to respect the direction of the connections.
Try reversing your two motors. If the motor that did not work works, it means that your connections are wrong. If not, your motor must be replaced.

My esieabot has an unstable behavior, it restarts itself occasionally, disconnects my remote terminal or does not detect my joystick for example

Check that the battery that powers the Raspberry Pi is fully charged. If in doubt, plug the power supply into your computer or a wall socket.
Check that there are no peripheral devices connected to the Raspberry Pi that consume too much power.

I can’t run my program, I get the error “can’t lock /var/run/pigpio.pid”

You encounter this error because you are trying to run multiple programs that use the same pigpio resources.

Stop esieabot-manager and pigpiod by running these commands: sudo systemctl stop esieabot-manager and sudo systemctl stop pigpiod. It will stop these default services to let you use the full pigpio resources. Be careful, they will be up again after the next reboot.
Use pigpiod and not pigpio in your code. It makes possible to run multiple programs that use GPIOs.

My esieabot doesn’t go straight

Two DC motors are never identical. It’s normal for them not to travel at exactly the same speed at the same voltage. That’s why the esieabot 2023 includes speed sensors for speed control. If you have a pre-2023 esieabot, you’ll need to use PWM signals in your program to reduce the speed of the motor that’s going faster than the other. This way, your esieabot will be able to go straight.

I get the error “Remote host identification has changed” when I try to connect via SSH

You’re getting this error because you’ve probably reset your esieabot, thereby resetting its internal SSH keys. As a precaution, your computer refuses to connect to your esieabot again, as it detects this change and believes it to be identity theft. To tell your computer to delete the old internal key from its memory, you need to run the following command (which is normally suggested in the error message) :

ssh-keygen -f "<your home folder>/.ssh/known_hosts" -R "<IP address or name of your esieabot>"