Easiest wireless to control small robot

I am trying to build as small a robot as I can and still be able to control it from around the house.I would really like to link it some way to my laptop and use that to control it. I am just starting this project So I am wondering if anyone can steer me in the right direction for what I should look at for a good ,small easy to use wireless system to link to my picaxe. Thanks for any help.

helpimadork said:

I am trying to build as small a robot as I can and still be able to control it from around the house.I would really like to link it some way to my laptop and use that to control it. I am just starting this project So I am wondering if anyone can steer me in the right direction for what I should look at for a good ,small easy to use wireless system to link to my picaxe. Thanks for any help.

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To help others to help you,
could you tell us

1. Your electronics / programming experience.

2. What equipment you own, or have access to.

3. Your budget.

e

It would also help to know if you require feedback from the robot or just need to issue commands.

"Small Robot" features can vary from mere cockroach scuttling to humanoid, so please clarify your intentions. For insights perhaps visit your nearest toy store! Wireless links can be thwarted by solid walls etc too.

FWIW the PICAXE controlled roving robot (shown beside Wall-E below) cost $$$($) & took 6 months to build.

If the XRF isn't the easiest I'd be surprised as it was designed to be powerful but easy. You can treat it like it wasnt there just send serial data. You can get two picaxes to chat with just a few lines of code on each. On low end picaxes where there's no background receive you can even temporarily "pause" an xrf and it'll buffer your data till you are ready to receive it. You can tell any of them to exist on one of 65,000 + networks where only the ones you have put on the same "see" each other, any others the data is automatically filtered out for you. There's a breadboard adapter to be released in 3 weeks that makes it breadboard friendly as the 2mm XBee laid out pins are a pain without a proper socket.

Brief stats are 1/2 km range in open air, very good "in building" expect 3+ solid walls, low power, about an inch square in size and low cost. If you want to stick to RevEd kit, it works better on an AXE210 board than the XBee it was designed for and this gives you a PC side with MAX232 and an 18X side for your robot.

Miles

This XRF sounds tempting for other work -is this it ?

Hi Stan,

Sure is ('orrible picture of the prototype, I'll get that changed on our site). You might have heard me mention it in the past. Took us a lot longer than we thought but it's finally here. I wanted to tick every box we could of Hippy's wish list before mentioning it to the community. He was kind enough to really consider what the users would like so the least we could do was give him what he asked for

There's two types of firmware at the moment, an XBee alike serial pass through (where it looks like the proverbial piece of wet string) and a wireless I/O mode (totally unlike the API mode on the XBee) where you can send a clear text, 12 byte packet to say something like

Device 52 what do you see on adc2 or device 27 turn out 4 on.

The device mode is rather basic at the moment but we'll add more functions to it as we go, for starters things like temp/humidity etc. This will mean with just the radio module and a sensor you'd have an RF node, no micro needed. There's code for the picaxe that turns it + an XRF in serial mode into the same type of wireless device.

I know you like your range, latest version was tested to 570m on the wire whip (supplied) at the full beans 250Kbps o.t.a. rate, lowering the rate in settings "should" increase sensitivity, we have one guy off playing with tin foil and wire who says he'll back when he's got over 2 miles out of a pair. For those who can't wait theres a software mode to turn a single module into a repeater, you can then daisy chain as many as you'd like.

Miles

Aha- Oct. 2010 post 19 ? I gather you stayed with the Texas Instrument ChipCon engine? Is it GFSK (Gaussian Freq. Shift Key) ? Insights on config. ease & issues appreciated ! Stan.

Dunno I didn’t write the code, someone far more 'tintelligent than me did

Indeed the TI part has been a good choice, there aren't too many SOC's at good money. The TI dev kits proved invaluable if darned expensive. There's a range where the same knowledge can be reshared on different frequencies (see CC2500 series). I've even got a wristwatch with a CC430 in
using aProtocol, an XRF and a picaxe you can relay events back and forth like "turn on the light", "doorbell just rang". As I've got an aP to IP gateway you could even monitor my temp from the watch in NZ, (uber geeky I know)

There's a support page for it which has pinouts, software settings, how to reflash the firmware, antenna lengths and a link to the 200+ page TI docs.

http://www.ciseco.co.uk/content/?p=1738

To send stuff to one, is essentially a single line of code (could be psdeo as I mix up my basics)

serout 7,N9600, (“123&#8221
getting data back in depends on how you want to do it, the not very flexible but easy to use serin might look like

serin 1,N9600, w1,w2,w3
For micro to PC comms over a pair of them I’ve examples of VB code I just need to tidy and plop up on our site.

Our aim is to bring the prices down as the volumes go up, £5 per module isn't beyond possible.

Theres a 14 day money back on all our stuff, try a pair, you don't like even the colour, send them back for a refund.

Rather than clutter the Forum, & as this is of direct personal interest to me, I'll send you a PM. Stan