[theGrue] has posted his Robot remote control project for us to gawk at. This box o’ buttons is a parallax propeller brain with some Xbee units for communication. Though it was designed to work with TOBI, his tool carrying robot, he made it so that he could control a multitude of robots with it by flipping some switches on the front of the remote.
[via Hacked Gadgets]
Crazy remote, controlling “A multitude of robots?”
For some reason this totally reminds me of the bad 1993 movie “Remote”
Hmm nice implementation but somehow i dont find it extremly intuituve to use, that and also at 1:15:
AH my eyes!!
yes, but can it bring me a beer?
Seriously, nice build but wouldn’t it be easier to use a wii remote? that’s about what he’s built.
A few years ago I built what I called a “Universal Calibrator” device which interfaced (wired, though, through either a 9-pin D-Sub or an RJ-45 with an adapter) to many of the PIC devices I was building at the time. Basically a single device to interface with multiple devices to get into a setup menu to change variables in the EEPROM memory or similar (depending on the target device) sorts of functions. It worked with a few devices, but I eventually ditched it because programming the target device with special code to detect and talk to the calibrator ended up being more hassle than it was worth.
How is the accelerometer control interface working out? It seems like something you’d have to get used to. Being from the “Atari Age”, I find a joystick to be more intuitive. :) Also, an analog joystick would be easy to sense just how far a person was tilting it to vary the robot’s speed. Can’t you do that with the accelerometer?
At least you know no one will ever pick it up and think it controls a Wii or a TV. Definitely controls robots.
The accelerometer is quite easy to use to drive TOBI even in the tightest spaces of office buildings. To be more clear, the SPD or speed switch tells the robot to limit its maximum speed even if the accelerometer is sending faster speeds. The controller just sends the accelerometer readings with several variables that alter the behavior of the robot.
We shall see how well it will interface with TOBI’s big brother soon.
I eventually ditched it because programming the target device with special code to detect and talk to the calibrator ended up being more hassle than it was worth.
He should have made the casing of those slide switches black before putting the cover on, a black marker might be enough.
Addendum: on the marker advise; in chinese products they often just put a piece of black paper over the button that slides along inside the case, it looks nicer and stops dust from getting in them.
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really like the idea of having it work for multiple bots