Wireless Control for Robotic Arm HELP!

johnnyonthespot
@johnnyonthespot-v574YG • Oct 26, 2024

This is my first post here at CE, so Thanks to everyone to helping out our society of engineers! I am an EE major, and for our senior project we are supposed to construct and control a robotic arm wirelessly...I'm having a hard time figuring this out.

We need to control the robotic arm using someone's actual arm as input. One idea was to use Accelerometor(s) to sense movement from an arm. BUT I don't know how we would send these signals properly(wireless) to the microcontroller. I was thinking about an RF transmitter and RF receiver to do so? but is this ideal?

a 3-axis accelerometer has 3 output pins(x,y,z), each of which would need a transmitter...but too many transmitters = noisy so it won't work. Somebody suggested using a demux and timer on both receiver and transmitter, but interfacing the outputs to the correct inputs would get messy.

One idea I had, but feeling that it is not workable, was using a nintendo wiimote and a bluetooth module(on the MCU). The problem here is getting the wiimote to connect to just a module, which I can't find out if anyone has done sucessfully yet. But if this worked, I could use the already constructed 8-bit data that the wiimote outputs...

(ps: trying to keep this to ONE microcontroller)

I'm using this board:MAVRIC-IIB: #-Link-Snipped-#

accelerometer/orientation ideas:
#-Link-Snipped-#

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  • neo1786

    @neo1786-XVaQVJ Nov 9, 2008

    @johnnyonthespot

    Hey thts really a cool thing ur working on......dont kno if i can help u much....i dont kno wat a 3-axis accelerometer is,as u said u dont want 3 antennas ,u can try TDMA#-Link-Snipped-#

  • rajmetha

    @rajmetha-u3SUaI Nov 13, 2008

    IF your query still remains...

    Give me more details..I will try to help///if posible

  • johnnyonthespot

    @johnnyonthespot-v574YG Nov 13, 2008

    rajmethaIF your query still remains...

    Give me more details..I will try to help///if posible

    --

    Well, it has come to this so far:

    I am going to use a wii nunchuck as the accelerometer. The wee nunchuck operates at 3.3v and communicates via I2C, which means i'll need a microcontroller to talk to it that has I2C capabilities.

    I found that the Arduino USB/Duemilinov has I2C on it, but only One input. I really wanted to use 2 nunchucks for motion detection...so Im stuck on that part.

    But I will use an RF link transmitter and Receiver that I found on sparkfun.com, they say they are excellent for data transfer.

    Other then those, Im not sure if this is all workable?

    RF 3500 MGHz transmitter @ <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">SparkFun Electronics</a>

    RF 3500 MGHz, 4800 bps receiver @ <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">SparkFun Electronics</a>

    Im not sure if Im being smart about selecting these...I have to idea how to choose a good baud rate, does it depend on my board?

    The receiver will be connected to a MAVRIC IIB microcontroller...

    Thanks

  • Ashraf HZ

    @Ash Nov 13, 2008

    Hey johnny! Welcome to CE!

    The nunchucks would be a good choice. If you did not mention those, I would have recommended the more expensive ADXL 330 ones.

    However, there needs to be duplex (2 way) communication between the 2 nunchucks and microcontroller as the nunchucks need to be initialized. I guess you can use multiple transmitters and receivers, but an alternative (or perhaps better) method would be to use transceiver modules that has both a transmit and receive functions. Something like this one:
    #-Link-Snipped-#

    Regarding the MAVRIC IIB uC.. damn, what a beast 😛

  • rajmetha

    @rajmetha-u3SUaI Nov 13, 2008

    jonney plz contact, one of expert on his mail ID with subject project work help and maximum detail with attachment, so that he can go through and if possible complete your project...

    He might cost you something..but depend on project size and no of days..as he is professional player..

    Contact at "kamdardipesh@gmail.com"

    Hope he help u and complete your project

    Yours Raj

  • Kaustubh Katdare

    @thebigk Nov 13, 2008

    rajmethajonney plz contact, one of expert on his mail ID with subject project work help and maximum detail with attachment, so that he can go through and if possible complete your project...

    He might cost you something..but depend on project size and no of days..as he is professional player..

    Contact at "kamdardipesh@gmail.com"

    Hope he help u and complete your project

    Yours Raj

    ...and that's your own email ID, I suppose.

  • sauravgoswami

    @sauravgoswami-UAfTlI Nov 14, 2008

    hope with so many experts his project surely will be a hit,johny-boy,i can help to sell ur project and earn big!!!!

  • Ashraf HZ

    @Ash Nov 14, 2008

    My group is working on a biped robot at the moment. What say we combined forces and make the ultimate humanoid? 😉

  • rajmetha

    @rajmetha-u3SUaI Nov 14, 2008

    The_Big_K...and that's your own email ID, I suppose.

    Yes, it is....

  • momin

    @momin-Jc6Ioa Nov 17, 2008

    cool idea for senior project.
    im working on mine also, its about constructing two autonomous robots that communicate together to accomplish a task (namely, one robot has an arm and its mission is to locate an item and pick it up and then load it on the other robot which moves to a prespecified location to deposit the item. for the communication between the two robots im thinking about rf transceivers by sending the data serialy. these transceivers are simple and have a wide range (up to 200 m) with appropriate errer detection technique such as parity bit you can eleminate errors.

  • johnnyonthespot

    @johnnyonthespot-v574YG Nov 28, 2008

    momincool idea for senior project.
    im working on mine also, its about constructing two autonomous robots that communicate together to accomplish a task (namely, one robot has an arm and its mission is to locate an item and pick it up and then load it on the other robot which moves to a prespecified location to deposit the item. for the communication between the two robots im thinking about rf transceivers by sending the data serialy. these transceivers are simple and have a wide range (up to 200 m) with appropriate errer detection technique such as parity bit you can eleminate errors.

    what type of transceivers are you using?

  • johnnyonthespot

    @johnnyonthespot-v574YG Sep 30, 2009

    #-Link-Snipped-# Got it working, 2 nunchucks and all.:0)

  • Ashraf HZ

    @Ash Oct 1, 2009

    Good work dude! Thanks for the update. Got any video demonstrations? Would love to see this in action 😀