How to: controler?

Help & Support Robot Parts
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Hello, I need some of your help. First I’ll be frank with you, I don’t know electronics, but I’ve always been fascinated by it. I have a background as a programmer and I’ve always like to build things and I like gizmo! My 9 years old son and I now have a project of building a simple ROV. We’ve almost figure out the mechanical parts but we’d like to be able to control it from a laptop.

Do you know any book, internet site, somebody… that could show us the basic on how to build a controler. We could also buy an existing controler, but we don’t know what to look for. Right now we just know we need more information so we could know what we are talking about!

I saw some book in the Roboshop store but I don’t know which one could be usefull.

Just to give you an idea, here is a list of that we’d like to have on our ROV. (probably not on the 1st version…)

  • direction
  • camera
  • temperature
  • compas
  • water detector (for leak)
  • safety device (kind of blow a balloon when no more communication…)
  • controled arm
    …

Thanks for you help.

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In fact, I’m trying to build something like this rollette.com/rovrev2/ That site shows a lot of details on the controler but I’m not familiar enough to decipher all the symbols… (Check the “How to” file for many details. You can even download the Visual Basic interface.)

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I’m working on the same project and am at the same level as you, beginner. This is a good site which I plan on visiting a lot: homebuiltrovs.com

My first ROV I plan on controlling with switches and have a webcam transmit live video over a USB tether to a laptop. My second ROV would be controlled through the laptop and have the webcam transmit live video, both with a USB tether. But I would add a HD video camera mounted under the webcam for high resolution images.

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