Trying real time Serial Port comunication with Nexus 4WD mecanum

Hi,

I’m a Robotic Engineering student, and i’m working in my final degree proyect (Bachelor Thesis) at this moment. I’m working with the mobile robot Nexus 4WD mecanum, wich is controlled by a modified Arduino 168p. The issue is that I need to send real time data from PC (Ubuntu 20.04) to it, while It is working, but the Serial Port is not avalible. This is caused by an expansion board in top of the Arduino, wich communicates with arduino 168p via Serial Port. Every time I need to upload code to Arduino I’m forced to disconnect all the expasion board and reconnect it again. To get around the problem of sending real time data, I tried using a Software Serial port form the library SoftwareSerial, but this was not possible either as both SoftareSerial and Nexus 4WD libraries use the same interrumpt vectors, so an error of redifiniton arise when trying to use them both at the same time.

I discarded the use of bluetooth communication as the bluetooth module and arduino will communcate via Serial Port too. Another aproach I tried is the use of an intermediary ESP32 WiFi board between PC and Arudino 168. The idea was to send data via WiFi to ESP32, wich it received perfectly, as I was able to turn ON and OFF Its red LED, an then broadcast the data received to the Arduino 168p via I2C protocol. However when I connected SDA and SCL pins between ESP32 and Arduino data was not received. Furthermore since I tried that, the Serial Port appears as “Device Bussy” when I try to upload new code to the Arduino 168p.

To summarise all the information:

  • Any idea on how to send real time data from PC to Arduino 168p?
  • Is there an electric diagram of the mobile base? With that maybe I’m able to see wich pins and interrupt vector are avalible.
  • How can I solve the new problem “Device Bussy” when trying to sen data to it?

Thanks.

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Hi @Javisv and welcome to our forum.

I cannot help a lot, and I see you are already deep into the topic, but have you already contacted Nexus robot support?

I guess they could provide at least electric diagram of the product and they would know the best if it is possible to use this serial port.

Hi @igor_X, thanks for responding so quickly!!

My first idea was to try and contact with Nexus Robot, but I could not find an email to reach them. Would you happen to have a contact email by any chance?

Thanks and have a great day!

1 Like

Hi @Javisv ,

You can write to them on [email protected] .

Thank you.