IR vs Bluetooth vs Zigbee vs RC

[gdubb2]

Hi Everyone,
I'm a total newby when it comes to bipeds, but I have noticed that quite a few people are moving away from the IR control. I have a few questions about that.

1: What seems to be the biggest problem with IR? Line of sight..etc.
2: With RC you seem to loose most of the AD ports, are there any advantages. I have a lot of RC stuff from my other 'bot endeavors, but I see some freq problems. (like at Robogames)
3. Bluetooth, Zigbee...advantages if you can't download new programs??

I bumped into an item at Rentron that converts IR to RF then back again eliminating the line of sight thing. Any thoughts or comments on this??
http://www.rentron.com/IR_TO_RF.htm

I have an RN-1 in the mail and have 2 gyros in hand. I'm fishing for ideas before jumping into something with both feet.

Thanks
Gary

[Ray]

Hi Everyone,
I'm a total newby when it comes to bipeds, but I have noticed that quite a few people are moving away from the IR control. I have a few questions about that.

1: What seems to be the biggest problem with IR? Line of sight..etc.
2: With RC you seem to loose most of the AD ports, are there any advantages. I have a lot of RC stuff from my other 'bot endeavors, but I see some freq problems. (like at Robogames)
3. Bluetooth, Zigbee...advantages if you can't download new programs??

I bumped into an item at Rentron that converts IR to RF then back again eliminating the line of sight thing. Any thoughts or comments on this??
http://www.rentron.com/IR_TO_RF.htm

I have an RN-1 in the mail and have 2 gyros in hand. I'm fishing for ideas before jumping into something with both feet.

Thanks
Gary

Hi, No great probrem with IR. It is easy to use, and simple enough for my guest to play RN , But, anyway, IR do not support continuous motion.

Since RC Transmitter can continuously send its Radio wave to RN,
RN can easily sample the wave steadily and give programming of continuous motion easily.


Well, if you have a good planning ( such as holding a channel for some second to become other operation mode .....), 3 channel are enough for many motion, this left 4 AD port for you gyros.

But, from my experience, making too much AD ports working togther, this will slow down the RN

(The Battery detection network doesn't work fine, I checked if the battery voltage drop, the internal voltage reference also drop....... not quite accurate then ...... I suggest not to use it and preferable disable the voltage detection subroutine........ 1 more port for the AD port)


Good Luck!

[rockweasel]

Hi

RC was way down my list of priorities when deciding how to progress with my homemade biped...until I came across the BlueSMiRF device. After a bit of research I realised it was:
1. Inexpensive
2. Simple to implement.
Another advantage is that I wouldn't be "stuck" with a dedicated remote, I could use my laptop. I bought a Bluetooth designed my own VBA interface. The only limit is my imagination. I had the link working within a day of receiving it. The BluSMiRF is very small, light, and runs off my OOPic-R boards supply.

[DanAlbert]

The bigest problem with IR happens during competition.

Your robot works great at home, then you go to some convention center hall with huge mercury lamps lighting the place up.

Those lights spew all over the light spectrum and trash IR.

Stick to the higher radio frequencies. ZigBee is nice for light weight, cheap and low power. Bluetooth is great too. A tad higher in power and not as good in range, but tends to be faster than ZigBee. If you have a need for speed try WiFi.

I've used all of the above and find the 802.xx protocols way better than IR. They are easy to use (they convert to async serial) and not expensive.
Stay away from IR. Companies use it because it is the cheapest solution.
But it just plain sucks.

Nuf said...

[gdubb2]

Thanks all for the response. It is as I imagined from reading the other threads. Although I never suspected building lighting being a problem.

DanAlbert, In another thread it was mentioned that you were working on a breakout box and stuff for the Play Station controllers. Have you made any progress?? At the present time, I don't have a laptop or PDA for Bluetooth. But I would be very interested in something with ZigBee.. I also have RC xmtrs and Recievers for 75 Mhz.

Thanks
Gary

[DanAlbert]

I used the PS2 controller to control the RN for Robogames but the serial port on the RN was to slow to do dynamic moves. I am rewriting the RNs OS to solve that problem.
If you are interested in the PS2 solution let me know. I just bought 100 used PS2 controllers and have enough parts left over to make about 3 ZigBee transmitter receiver sets.

Do you want to use the PS2 for the RN or some other bot?

[Ray]

Hi DanAlbert,

I have some problems:


Are you using the ETX, ERX port or directly using XBee to the serial jack of RN using the RN Potocol to make motion?

Are you directly modify the PS2 controller or using something convertion adaptor?

I have just bought two XBee, but not yet started, By default, when a XBee send a serial data, the other receciving end will receive the data ?
necessary to make a config. first?

Grateful if you can help me.

[gdubb2]

Do you want to use the PS2 for the RN or some other bot?

I was thinking of the RN-1, but am not really sure what I want to do yet. I my other 'bots are combat things and use R/C, so I have radio stuff. What I really need to do is get a laptop.

Thanks
Gary

[DanAlbert]

Hey Ray,
I hacked the PS2 with a custom PC board I built that converts the "SPI" style interface into single serial ascii characters. I then fed the serial into one ZigBee which transmits that character to the other ZigBee I installed in RN's head.
I fed the 3.3 volt serial signal to the ERX.

Two big issues exist.

First: Since the RN is 5 volts you cannot feed the ETX back directly to the ZigBee board. A resistor voltage divider network is required. My new version of the ZigBee interface boards has this built in. Unless you do the this you cannot get any acknowledgement from the RN that it received the last command you sent.

Second: The RoboBasic program cannot seem to handle a group of ascii characters without choking. I found this out after I rewrote my PS2 converter board to send the full realtime state of all the buttons and joysticks in a burset of about 6 bytes of data. It seems that you can only send the RN one character at a time.

Ugh.

So I am in the middle of rewriting the RN's operating system. I have a great deal of it done but I have been preoccupied with relocating from NJ to CA. , so I have not spent as much time as I would like to on this project. I expect to have something available for other by the end of November.

I currently have ZigBee interface boards available if you don't feel like making your own.

Dan

[DanAlbert]

Hi gdubb2,

I have some PS2 interface boards available now but they are version 1 and can only send about 25 different commands.

What you do with those commands is of course programmable and left up to your imagination.

We used these controllers for the soccer event at RoboGames and they worked fairly well.

The newer software to be able to do fluid and dynamic movements is in the works as I have stated in other posts. Since this is a hobby and not a profession it does not get my full attention. But I am putting about 10 hours a week into this project and anticipate I will have fluid movement controlled by the PS2 controller before the end of the year.


I don't like the laptop solution as much as the PS2 controller. These style controllers are built for human interface, unlike the qwerty keyboard they are easy to use with your eyes fixed on your robot.

Dan

[gdubb2]

Hi Dan,
Well, I just received my RN yesterday, so I am now hot and heavy into assembly. I picked up 2 PG-3 gyros, and plan to incorporate them right from the beginning. Where I go next is still open.

I would like to get somewhat proficient with it before June. I usually attend RoboGames with my middleweight combat bot, and it would be a hoot to also have the RN to compete with. How I controll it is very open for change. I will probably play around with RC for now, but anything is possible.

I do see a need to have a laptop for program changes though even if you don't use it for control.

Thanks for the info..
Gary

[bauermech]

I don't like the laptop solution as much as the PS2 controller. These style controllers are built for human interface, unlike the qwerty keyboard they are easy to use with your eyes fixed on your robot.

Quite right. I don't want to be hunting around the screen for an appropriate button to click while in the middle of a bout. If you've ever played video games you already have an edge. With some additional practice one could master the moves in no time.

[Pev]

Being on erm 'older' (lol) member of the community I personally never got to grips with games controllers but I have been looking at the Samsung Q1 media tablet PC (its only a 7 inch screen so not too huge) as a potential controller using bluetooth and expanding the screen area on the PDA work I have already done with DotNet. Would be interested if anyone has tried one out......

Pev

[gdubb2]

Pev, I'm with you on the game controllers...The last thing I used like that was the joysticks on an old Atari, and joysticks on a Commodore 64. But I agree that the qwerty kbrd is not very user friendly. I feeel more at home with a 2 stick RC transmitter. Actually it may be a very easy thing to adapt to a game controller..I've just not been a gamer.

Us old dudes are like that though..I still like Zork. Anyone remember that one?

Gary

[bauermech]

Us old dudes are like that though..I still like Zork. Anyone remember that one?

I always loved Pitfall, Warlords, Alternate Reality, and M.U.L.E.

I used a two gimbal RC TX, but ran into the issue of not having enough ways to call all the different routines. I suppose if I were to dig deeper into it there are ways of setting it up, but have yet to spend much time using one. The gamepad has 12 buttons, a 4/8-direction nav-pad, and two analogue sticks... all user-definable. I set up one button as a "shift", another as an "Alt" - which multiplies the functionality of each button/button combination by four (open, alt, shift, or alt & shift + button/stick/pad).
Whatever works is good.