Blog / Learning Rust on the Robot

the serial

Learning Rust on the Robot

The Neato's ESP32 firmware started life in C++. I'm rebuilding it in Rust — bare-metal, no_std, on real hardware — and turning the motor control into a reusable driver crate. I've written Rust before, but always at arm's length; this is me going deeper on purpose, in the open: toolchain pain, borrow-checker fights, and the refactor from "it works" to "it's a library".

2 episodes In progress
Learning Rust on the Robot
episodes
Learning Rust on the Robot The wheel that wouldn't stop

AUG 10, 2026 · Ep. 2

The wheel that wouldn't stop

I built a little tool to ask the robot a question. It answered — and then, when I told it to stop, it didn't. Turns out Ctrl-C kills your program, not the thing on the other end of the wire.
Learning Rust on the Robot The line I couldn't give back

AUG 9, 2026 · Ep. 1

The line I couldn't give back

I had one tiny function to finish — turn bytes into a line. The compiler refused it twice, and then, when I tried to write a test to prove it worked, refused that too. Both refusals were right.
reference

The living docs — always current, unlike the episodes (which are snapshots in time).

build-doc

The Build Doc
handoff

Handoff
procedure

Measuring Motor Current