architecture

System Overview

Full concept overview of the autonomous tick rover platform

System Overview

Type: Architecture

What You're Building

An autonomous ground rover that drags a permethrin-treated cloth to collect and kill ticks, logging session data to track trends over time.

This is essentially:

  • A mobile tick control system
  • A session data logging pipeline
  • A robotics platform you can iterate on

System Architecture

[RC Crawler]
   ├── Movement (ESC + steering servo)
   ├── Main battery (driving only)
   │
   └── [Raspberry Pi System]
         ├── Camera (forward awareness / navigation)
         ├── GPS (location tagging)
         ├── ADC (battery monitoring)
         ├── PWM driver (controls vehicle)
         └── WiFi (talks to you)

Behind the rover:

[Drag bar] → [White cloth] → [Ticks collected on underside]

Key Design Decisions

1. Cloth-based Collection

  • Controlled surface
  • Permethrin-treated
  • Repeatable

2. GPS-tagged Sessions

  • Log each run with date, time, route
  • Manual tick count after each session

3. Separate Pi Power

  • Stability
  • Reliability

Operation Flow

  1. Pre-Flight — Open New Mission screen in the dashboard. System runs automated checks: rover connection, battery level (shown as %), GPS lock, camera, storage, WiFi, CPU temp, and weather (precipitation probability over next 3 hours from Open-Meteo). Weather is advisory — it won't block launch, but system failures will. Hit Re-check after fixing any issues.
  2. Launch — Confirm launch from the dashboard. Rover begins autonomously. Weather conditions are auto-snapshotted and attached to the mission record (no manual logging).
  3. Patrol — Rover drives the recorded route, drag cloth collects ticks. Dashboard shows live telemetry. All commands (stop, return home, take photo, pause) require confirmation dialogs.
  4. Capture — Rover stops at intervals, captures image + GPS + battery. Captures are browsable in a gallery with metadata and a lightbox viewer.
  5. Return-to-home — When battery low or route complete, rover navigates back and alerts.
  6. Inspect — Flip cloth, count ticks manually, log the session. Mission detail shows weather at start, GPS route map, and battery drain chart.

Missions are named by their start date and time (e.g. "Apr 12, 2026, 9:34 AM") — no manual naming needed.

Future Capabilities

Once working, this platform can:

  • Compare tick counts across seasons and weather conditions
  • Correlate counts with time of day, temperature, humidity
  • Optimize yard treatment strategies
  • Track trends over multiple years
Next →Full Project Spec