RC Tank - Bluetooth

This is a small tank robot that I made this weekend. The idea behind it was to completely remove the vex micro controller from the equation and add some new hardware in. I used an arduino diecimila usb board as the brains of the robot, the sensors are all from vex (ultrasonic, and light). The wireless connection is established with a bluesmirf rp-sma from sparkfun.com, it acts as a wireless serial cable to pass data to the arduino and back to the computer. The camera as well as the micro controller are individually powered by separate slim 4.8v battery packs from onlybatterypacks.com. On the software side visual studio.net 2008 was used to program and application to use the W,S,A, and D keys to drive the robot as well as provide sensor data.

Category:

Entertainment

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• arduino
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• serial
• sparkfun
• wireless
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• ultrasonic
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• watts
• ohms
• resistance
• microcontrollers

[Tvinky]

Could you share more info about your project, source etc??? I'm interested to build something like that. I was interesting how can I get back some data from sensors to pc. And how hard is to write software which can receive that data and do some action. Thanks!

[Halo2maniaccc]

Look at my stepper motor videos in the video description you will find a link to my google code page. I have source up for many things. You can get data back to the pc using a very basic serial connection. Get an arduino, load up a sketch to read sensor values, send them to the pc with serial.print which sends it over the serial to usb connection. Programs can be written to open the serial port....read the data...decide...and send data back to the arduino. It will take some time to do.

[javelinthrower1]

If you used and infrared range finder it would probably work on carpet ad laminent

[Halo2maniaccc]

Yep, Sparkfun sells some that are really nice but apparently the manufacturer has stopped making them so I will have to grab a few before they run out. Infrared sensors are better for angled distances because light reflects back but sounds just pings off in the other direction.

[Mattsfridge]

You should make an airsoft mini tank that shoots bbs and can lay smoke as well that would you would be able to sell if you made it pretty tough as well I would buy one for around £300

[Tvinky]

@Halo2maniaccc Yeah I found the link after I wrote comment, sorry. I will study your projects. At this moment I don't know how to realize such project: robot moves somewhere and when he sees wall, he sends coordinates to PC. And on PC I want to draw this, so basically robot moves around playground and gives wall coordinates to PC, and I draw some kind of map on computers screen. Dunno from which way to start, but will study Internets :|

[msg00pak]

Keep it up

[Halo2maniaccc]

Yes and no, you can't simply hook up the camera to the bluetooth unit and say work. You would first have to get a camera module that you can access on the hardware level (sparkfun has them) then you would capture a picture and turn the image into a serial stream which would be sent over bluetooth. On the other end the serial stream would be received and turned into an image. I am not sure if the bluetooth serial link could handle the amount of data though.

This is not an easy task to do!

[copperhead228]

@Halo2maniaccc cant you hook up the camera to the bluetooth too

[Halo2maniaccc]

Yes that can be done but on a hard laminate surface not carpet the ultrasonic signal could ping off which can be a problem.

BTW someone asked this same question in the comments section a few posts down.