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How to control the robot over USB serial instead of Wi-Fi with Tiny Engineer

Connect the robot by USB cable and drive it from your agent through the serial transport.

Who it is forA developer whose robot sits somewhere without a Wi-Fi connection or who prefers a wired link to the computer running the agent.

The problemWi-Fi may be unavailable, unreliable, or undesirable on a shared or locked-down network, so the default HTTP link does not always fit.

The outcomeThe robot receives agent poses over a USB cable, using the serial transport from the same setup tool.

What you need first

  • 3D printer with filament, or an order of printed parts (docs/3d/order-parts.md)
  • Parts from the shopping list (docs/shopping.md), including the main control board, ESP32, 5x SG90 servos, OLED, and speaker
  • M2 screws and a 5 V USB supply rated at 2 A or more
  • A Wi-Fi network for the robot
  • A machine with npx to run the tiny-engineer setup command

Steps

  1. Build and flash the robot following docs/getting-started.md.
  2. Connect the robot to the computer with USB and confirm it is powered by the 5 V supply.
  3. Run npx -y tiny-engineer --transport serial to use the serial transport, then check docs/serial.md for the exact framed USB serial format. (inferred, check the README)
  4. Start a short agent task and confirm the robot reacts over the cable.

Prompt for your agent

Use the repo github.com/jamro/tiny-engineer and its serial transport described in docs/serial.md. Run `npx -y tiny-engineer --transport serial` on the machine connected to the robot at <serial port>, then report whether the robot responds. Expected output: a confirmed serial connection and a pose change on the robot. Verify the robot reacts to one test pose.

Caveat. The README names the serial transport flag but the exact subcommand and port handling are documented only in docs/serial.md and docs/integration.md, so check those before relying on this flow.

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