8 Aug 2026ProcessERDEN UtilityConcept
ERDEN Utility is opened as the second ERDEN platform, starting from a factory VEVOR four-wheel electric utility cart: roughly 51.2 by 25.6 inches, 125.7 lb, rated for 660 lb of payload, driven by a 500 W brushless system to about 5 km/h on 13 inch pneumatic tyres. The vehicle is factory-standard. No conversion work has been done, nothing has been measured first-hand, and every figure recorded so far is vendor-published. The purpose of opening the record now is to have somewhere honest to put the characterisation work as it happens, rather than reconstructing it later.
Read entry→8 Aug 2026ProcessERDEN UtilityIn development
The Phase 1 characterization procedure is written: twelve sections covering platform identification, physical baseline, drivetrain, the control path and connector inventory, battery and power, steering, braking, factory safety behaviour, an observed electrical architecture diagram, an integration space survey, the payload attachment survey, and the evidence standard that ties them together. Every finding starts at 'not inspected' and carries the source of its value, so vendor figures cannot quietly become verified figures. A derived completion gate reads the findings and reports exactly which evidence is still missing before drive-by-wire architecture can start. No inspection has been performed yet — this is the script, not the result.
Read entry→1 Aug 2026TestingERDEN ScoutIn development
Working through the list of things that have to be true before the rover moves under command for the first time. Power is on and behaving, compute is mounted, and the drivetrain is waiting on replacement mounts. The remaining work is the control link: a transmitter and receiver bound, a failsafe that triggers on link loss, and a stop that does not route through the autonomy computer. We are writing the pre-run checklist before the drive rather than after it, on the theory that the first run is exactly when a checklist is worth having.
Read entry→18 Jul 2026MechanicalERDEN ScoutBlocked
The first revision of the custom motor and encoder brackets cracked at the fastener bosses. The failure showed up on a bench load test rather than in the field, which is the good version of this outcome. The more interesting problem is that the same bracket locates the encoder against the motor shaft, so the part degrades odometry as it goes soft, long before it visibly breaks. Any encoder data collected in the last two weeks has to be treated as suspect.
Read entry→27 Jun 2026PowerERDEN ScoutIn development
Settled the pack architecture around what the onboard charger expects rather than around maximum capacity. A 3S lithium-ion pack built from 18650 cells sits inside the charger's input window, which keeps charging on the platform and keeps the onboard current monitoring meaningful. A larger pack with an external charger was the obvious alternative and was rejected: it would mean the rover leaves the bench to charge, and the integrated telemetry stops describing the thing that is actually powering the robot.
Read entry→13 Jun 2026ElectricalERDEN ScoutComplete
The driver board turned out to carry a complete power system: a 3S charge circuit, a regulated 5 V rail, INA219 current and voltage monitoring, and an external DC input feeding all of it. We had been designing a custom distribution board to do exactly those four things. That board is now cancelled. This is the second time on this platform that reading the hardware carefully has been worth more than a week of design work.
Read entry→30 May 2026PowerERDEN ScoutComplete
Traced the power paths through the chassis with a meter rather than trusting the diagram. The objective was a simple one: know exactly what is energised, from where, and what happens to each rail when the pack is disconnected. Several assumptions carried over from the planning stage turned out to be wrong, including where the regulated rail originates and which subsystems stay live when the main switch is off.
Read entry→16 May 2026MechanicalERDEN ScoutComplete
Full teardown and inventory of the base platform before anything was added to it. Every fastener, connector, and cable run was photographed and catalogued. The drivetrain is well made for the price; the encoder mounting is the weakest part of the mechanical design and was flagged immediately as something we would replace. Serviceability is good — the platform can be opened and closed with hand tools in a few minutes, which matters on a unit that will be rebuilt repeatedly.
Read entry→9 May 2026ProcessERDEN ScoutComplete
A Waveshare WAVE ROVER 4WD arrived and became ERDEN Scout. The scoping decision behind it was to buy a known-good base rather than fabricate a chassis, so that the engineering risk we take on this platform is autonomy and integration rather than mechanical fabrication. Scout is a development platform, not a product candidate: outdoor capable, portable by one person, serviceable with hand tools, and instrumented on every channel we might later need to explain a failure.
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