I always wanted to control a tank through my PC or my mobile phone, so this is it....
I used an arduino with L293 h-bridge on a protoshield , a cheap bluetooth module and a RP5 tracked chassis for the robot.
In order to control it from my PC I asked a friend of mine to make a small program. So he used visual studio and made me the program, but I cannot find a way to upload it here ( it is an exe file). Finally, last week I got my new cell phone (Galaxy ace), so I tried to make an application to control the tank from my android phone. I used the app inventor and with the help of App Inventor from O' Reilly Media http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920016632 (chapter 12) I made a small simple app ( which also I cannot upload).
If any of you would like to use the program and the app you can download them from here: https://rapidshare.com/files/2694565666/Serial_Talk.rar ( the visual program that I use in the video) and https://rapidshare.com/files/3609254892/bluetooth_a.rar (the app), or from the attached files.
Update
In this last video I use my android mobile phone to act as an ip camera. For this purpose I used the ip webcam application. Enjoy!!!!
Very good idea and looks clean. I will have to take a look into your program since I am planning also to do soemthing with wireless communication to/from the robot.
If you pack the exe file into a zip it should be possible to upload it.
Mine is not any more impessive than yours, as you actually made the app yourself! I downloaded “Blue Control” from android market. It’s on-screen buttons sends a fixed character at every key-press, ie. “down” arrow sends the “D” character, “up” arrow sends “U” character, and so on. Do you know any AVR? If so, see the “//Serial com. Interrupt Service Routine” in the code at http://sandakerpalm.no/blog/projects/bluetooth-controlled-dc-motor/.
If I knew the Blue Control app before I wouldn’t bother making mine… Well I tested it but I think I will stick with mine and further develop it! I visited your site before, unfortunately I know nothing about AVR… Thank you very much though!!!
The camera that I use is a cheap 2.4ghz wireless camera. I tried connecting it to my computer with http://easycap.co.uk/ but with no success. I have image from the camera on my tv and control the robot with my PC or phone.
I know you said you would further develop your application, and if you do, I am very interested to see how it turns out! Meanwhile, I thought I’d give you a hint on another app I found, called QkCtrl. I just started using it, really versatile with customized button setup and everything.
edit: this was supposed to be a reply to your post, not my own.