Hi
I am making a robot and I am looking for a remote controller for the robot. I would need 2 joystick and a LCD screen would be dream come through. I do not want to use R/C remotes, because I have to decode all the signals from receiver.
Is there anything open source available so that I can send the data I like to the robot? There is an Arduino on the robot so I prefer to receive some information from the robot as well.
Has anyone come across something that can help me in this project? Also if you think I am being stupid not using the typical RC controller, please elaborate why.
Thank you for your time and effort.
Hi,
We don’t see why you won’t consider RC hobby control in your robot. There is a lot of examples/Arduino sample codes to help you to interface an RC hobby receiver to your Arduino.
]Test Your RC Receiver Using Arduino/:m]
]RC Control and Arduino: A Complete Works/:m]Another idea might be using a PS2 Controller as used in the Lynxmotion Aluminum A4WD1 PS2 Rover Kit.
You can take a look at the assembly instructions for the A4WD1 Robot to have an idea how to wire the PS2 Receiver with your Arduino board. You can also download the Arduino sketch for the A4WD1+PS2 Controller here.
Regards,
Thank you, bdaouas.
Why I do not like RC remote controls?
- There is nothing I can do to transfer the information I am interested in from the robot to remote controller. ( I know some receiver have their own telemetry system, but I still do not have any freedom)
- The RC signal decoding is taking a lot of resources. Either from the software or hardware. I can think of few different ways to decode the RC signal but they will use so much resources specially if I use Atmega328 on my robot. (there are only 3 timers)
Why I do not find PS2 Controller suitable?
- Very short range.
- Problem with sending back information.
Is there anything I am missing?
What would the LCD display?
Hi CBenson
I have a pneumatic system on the robot, knowing the pressure on the LCD would be dream come through. I have the sensors hooked up.
I have 7 temperature sensors.
For now this is what I have. In future if the capability is given I would add more information. Such as measuring RPMs and speeds of different parts.
I have already developed a serial link and compressed all the data to bit and byte level.
Certain remotes have two-way communication (largely for RC applications, like temperature, pressure, battery voltage), but they are normally only compatible with sensors they produce. You’d likely need a separate system which is on the robot, sends the signal (transmitter) to a receiver which is then displayed on a small LCD.
Yeah, I think I would need the same thing. But I thought there might be something that people have worked on it already. I cannot be the only one with this issue. 
I ended up making a product for this need, I thought maybe you would be interested in it.
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