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How to add a button to the Jetbot Nano

First we are going to connect the button and wires to the JetBot like so Jetbot button wiring diagram.

To test if the button is connected correctly we are going to open up the terminal. Run the following commands 1 by 1.

python3

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)

GPIO.setup(15,GPIO.IN)

x=GPIO.input(15)

x
The output should be 1.

Now if you press the button and execute the x=GPIO.input(15) command again, the output should be 0.

When exiting the terminal make sure to use the following command. 

GPIO.cleanup()
This cleans all the pins, if you don’t do this the gpio pin stays locked up.

Now that we know that our button works we are going to open up a new python file. 

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)
inPin=15
GPIO.setup(inPin,15,IN)
while True:
    x=GPIO.input(inPin)
    print(x)
Now we can read out the pin and the button is connected!

I used the following tutorial to set up the button.

Errors

While trying to run the command import RPi.GPIO as GPIO I found out that I needed to install the RPi module. To install the RPi module I first had to install pip. I had a lot of problems trying to install the library and couldn’t get it to work.

How to use a button to turn the Jetbot on or off

On your Jetson Nano, you have to find the header pins they are located here: top view

Here you can see what the pins do: header pins

  1. First you have to use a jumper wire to prevent the Jetson Nano from auto powering on after you plug the cable in.
  2. After that you can connect a button to pins 1 and 2. After shortening the pins the Jetson will power on or off.

Source for the documentation Dots and brackets codeblog.

Applying research to our project

After discussing with the team we decided that we didn’t want the power on/off button to shut the whole Jetbot down. Instead we want to have a push button to just pause the Jetbot and stop moving. So that the Jetbot is still powered on and able to start drawing again. We came to the conclusion that a remote receiver would be a good option to pause the Jetbot.

Last update: January 23, 2023