Integrating the PWM light control into the Scrap Rover’s Flask server: a /switch/light endpoint toggles a smooth pulsating effect on and off, running in a background thread alongside camera PTZ and static file serving.
First proof-of-concept for GPIO-driven power switching: using an N-channel MOSFET and PWM from the Raspberry Pi 5 to control and pulsate a light bulb. A key stepping stone toward full motor drive control on the Scrap Rover.
Description of the update This update covers the addition of camera movement controls to the Scrap Rover web interface — both as clickable HTML buttons and keyboard shortcuts, with keypresses visualised live using Keyviz. The current problem of dropped inputs (caused by in-flight HTTP requests being ignored) is addressed by introducing a request queue, ensuring every keypress is handled in order. The next milestone is gamepad controller support via the Web Gamepad API. ...
So here’s a little update on the camera setup. I have been able to get the camera working and streaming video to my laptop. This is done using a Raspberry Pi on my local network. The camera is not yet connected to the Raspberry Pi directly but that is the next step. The project turned a little into something else. I had to buy Raspberry Pi because my old one seem to be malfunctioning. I can scrap the Scrap in the Scrap Rover project name if you will. But that’s fine ‘cause I can use the PI all sorts of other projects as well. ...
Upgrade I tested my old Raspberry PI 3 model B+ and didn’t start anymore. So I made the upgrade to the Raspberry PI model 5. Making use of PI imager software it was pretty easy to provide an image to start from. It’s was always extra steps to configure an internet connection and enable SSH but with the imager software you can configure that during installation there.
How would the controlls look like I was thinking, maybe it would be interesting to move the Scrap Rover with a controller? This way the camera can be controlled with one joystick and the Rover itself with another. Beside that if you’re connected with a phone maybe also have an option to control it with buttons in the UI. Resources Gamepad API - javascript
Installing Media MTX To start out my journey on discovering how Media MTX works, I installed the binary on my Windows laptop. It came as .zip file so after extracting this file I was presented with a .exe file. Executing this binary resulted in a warning which I ignored and let it run anyway. After this a new console window opened which gave the following logs: 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF MediaMTX v1.17.0, windows, amd64 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF configuration loaded from C:\\\\Projecten\\\\Tools\\\\mediamtx\\\_v1.17.0\\\_windows\\\_amd64\\\\mediamtx.yml 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF \\\[RTSP] listener opened on :8554 (TCP/RTSP), :8000 (UDP/RTP), :8001 (UDP/RTCP) 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF \\\[RTMP] listener opened on :1935 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF \\\[HLS] listener opened on :8888 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF \\\[WebRTC] listener opened on :8889 (HTTP), :8189 (ICE/UDP) 2026/03/30 16:27:40 INF \\\[SRT] listener opened on :8890 (UDP) My realization came that this will start some sort of server which can serve request. I haven’t however found a way to configure the source of the video that should be streamed. ...
Overview The Scrap Rover is a remotely controlled vehicle built from scrap parts: a Raspberry Pi, an IP camera, and wheels. The controller interface is a webpage served by the Pi itself, accessible via Wi-Fi. UI Layout The webpage consists of two sections: Video stream — embedded as an HTML element at the top Control buttons — directional buttons below the stream ┌─────────────────────┐ │ │ │ video stream │ │ │ ├─────────────────────┤ │ [▲] │ │ [◄] [▼] [►] │ └─────────────────────┘ PC users can additionally use arrow keys for input. ...
Introduction Today I decided to start a new project that involves a Raspberry PI an IP camera and some wheels I once got as a gift. The idea is building a vehicle that can move forward, backward and can make turns. As easy as this sounds this should be possble remotely. The IP camera will send a live feed to whatever device is used to watch the stream the camera is sending. We had a security camera laying around that was never installed properly so to make use of it now seems appropriate for a project called Scrap Rover. chuckle ...
Introduction Now that the IP camera is confirmed working over RTSP, the next challenge is getting that stream into a browser without plugins or heavy client software. The solution: convert the RTSP stream to WebRTC and serve it directly from the Pi’s own webpage. The full pipeline looks like this: IP Camera (RTSP) → MediaMTX → WebRTC → Browser WebRTC is natively supported in all modern browsers and brings latency down to under 200ms — a significant improvement over the ~500ms delay observed in VLC. ...