Bluetooth racer
As part of preparation for Software Freedom Day, Freddie and I worked on a bluetooth controlled car. The first step was to use a IOIO board (http://www.house4hack.co.za/ioio-controlled-car) which was pretty cool.
The next step was to make a car that is controlled by an Arduino via bluetooth. Freddie used the Arduino sketch and Android apk from Mobot (http://www.mobot.es/MobotBTCar.html) as a starting point. He replaced the motor controller from a toy car with his own custom circuit shown below:
The circuit consists of a ATTiny 2313, Bluetooth Bee (Seeedstudio) and 1A motor driver breakout (Sparkfun). This works great with the Mobot apk.
For more phun, I wrote an Android app, called BlueRCR that records a series of commands for the car to be executed. The user can select to go straight, left, right, reverse or stop and specify the time for each command. A screen shot of the application is shown below:
The user can the issue these commands and the car will race. Here is a short clip of the car and app in action:
The source code for the Android app and Arduino sketch is available on github: https://github.com/skullkey/bluercr
We are planning to have the car, app and a simple track at Software Freedom Day, so if you wanna play … see you there!
As part of preparation for Software Freedom Day, Freddie and I worked on a bluetooth controlled car. The first step was to use a IOIO board (http://www.house4hack.co.za/ioio-controlled-car) which was pretty cool. The next step was to make a car that is controlled by an Arduino via bluetooth. Freddie used the Arduino sketch and Android apk…