Wireless Wii Robot
Physical computing -> wireless two-way data -> physical control. This is a intuitive, durable, and fun way to control almost anything. Here I've built a transmitter which reads data from the Wii nunchuck and sends it over xbee. The rover receives the xbee broadcast, decodes it, maps it to drive the tank-like dual motor setup, and controls the motor driver IC. To achieve my goal of a small mint-tin fitted remote I used a lithium polymer (LiPo) battery, and to make them safer I included a voltage monitoring subroutine. The result is modular, easily incorporated into future projects, or disassembled for different use. Here are more details:
Transmitter
Arduino pro mini (3.3V version), xbee series 2.5, used wii nunchuck, lipo battery, old off-brand mint tin.
Receiver
9V battery, Xbee, ATmega168, SN754410 H-Bridge motor IC, lego motors
Source Files
These are provided under the same licence as my photos: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0. Click on either image to download the one of the sketches.
Software Requirements
- Arduino IDE 017 or later (for the new Wire library)
- That's it.
Helpful links/Resources
- Here's a great tutorial on how to understand/control this H-bridge motor IC: DC Motor Control Using an H-Bridge
- Background and Power Supply, a SparkFun lecture on how to make a regulated power supply.
- Make Blog and Make Magizine - Great community with unparalleled creativity and originality. Notice the make magazines my bot crawls over?
- Did you like my Arduino AVR sticker label? it's from todbot blog.
Future Directions:
- Packetized data transfer
- Bigger bot: (I have a wheelchair I can't wait to get running..)
- Put in an on/off switch and status leds.
- Miniaturize the receiver into it's own mint tin once I have a more permanent (not lego) rover.
- Force feedback by measuring of current draw on the motors, rumbling the nunchuck (or something).
- Generally more two-way communication.
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