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The Buyer’s Guide to Pictorus

Technologists face a tough challenge in choosing the correct software toolchain to empower their team and ensure efficient code delivery. In some cases, minimal tooling may be sufficient—ie a small IoT product with just 100 lines of code, where complex developer tools aren't necessary. However, when it

What's New in Pictorus - Q3 '24

Fresh off our recent seed fundraise last quarter, in Q3 we've already shipped a ton of new features, from UI tools to communication protocols, which we'd like to share with you today. CAN Support Pictorus now supports the CAN messaging protocol, one of the backbone technologies

What's happening to MATLAB?

Or, "The slow demise of the engineering toolbox everyone loved to hate at University." Twenty years ago, if you were brave enough to launch a new hardware startup in the automotive or aerospace domain, your toolchain was pretty simple: MATLAB for your engineers to do basic trade-off analysis,

Pictorus raises $3.5M to make software development easier for aerospace & automotive sectors

Today I’m thrilled to announce Pictorus has closed a $3.5M seed financing round, led by Catapult Ventures. After a year in stealth and nearly the same in Beta, we’re excited to use this latest funding to bring Pictorus to the aerospace, automotive, and robotic markets with a

LQR Control of a Self Balancing Robot

In this post we're improving our self-balancing robot project, by introducing a Linear-Quadratic Regulator (LQR) to significantly improve stability and handling. We'll go through the entire derivation and implementation process, leveraging the Python terminal within Pictorus which makes all of this really easy. 0:00 /0:

Designing a Self-Balancing Robot with Pictorus

In this post we’ll cover the design of a two-wheeled self-balancing robot - a classic control systems design challenge. We’ll assemble the robot hardware from accessible off-the-shelf electronics and 3D printed parts and design a controller in a Pictorus app. Design Overview The goal of a two-wheeled self-balancing

What's new in Pictorus - Q4 Wrap-up 2023

Hello from Pictorus and happy holidays! We'd like to share some exciting product updates we've been working on as the year wraps up. Some features in early development are currently only available to alpha testers. Please reach out to us at support@pictor.us if you

LQR Control of a Self Balancing Robot

In this post we're improving our self-balancing robot project, by introducing a Linear-Quadratic Regulator (LQR) to significantly improve stability and handling. We'll go through the entire derivation and implementation process, leveraging the Python terminal within Pictorus which makes all of this really easy. 0:00 /0:

Designing a Self-Balancing Robot with Pictorus

In this post we’ll cover the design of a two-wheeled self-balancing robot - a classic control systems design challenge. We’ll assemble the robot hardware from accessible off-the-shelf electronics and 3D printed parts and design a controller in a Pictorus app. Design Overview The goal of a two-wheeled self-balancing

What's New in Pictorus - Q3 Wrap-Up 2023

Hello from Pictorus! Today we're excited to share updates about the latest features released since the launch of our free open beta last quarter. As always, before we dive in, we’d love to hear any feedback from our beta users. Please feel free to reach out to

Building an Obstacle-Avoiding Robot using Pictorus

In this post, we'll program an obstacle-avoiding robot to autonomously drive around a room. It will detect barriers by pivoting its HC SR04 ultrasonic sensor to scan nearby surroundings.

Building a DIY Thermostat with Pictorus

In this post, we will run through the design of a simple home automation device - a thermostat - using Pictorus. Along the way we’ll showcase a few extensible functionalities within our app including talking to sensors using the I2C protocol, building up reusable components and sensor APIs, and

Plantbot - building a plant-sustaining robot with Pictorus

In this post we’ll go over the design of a small plant sustaining robot - featuring a simple watering system that activates based on soil moisture levels. And just for fun, we'll mount the plant to a rover that drives around seeking out optimum lighting for our

Controlling a Pictorus app over UDP from Python

In this blog post, we will demonstrate communication between a Pictorus motor control app, and a high-level Python controller, employing an OpenCV facial tracking algorithm leveraging an onboard camera.