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Step 9Introducing the Wixel - wrap it up.
Well that is the basic wired and wireless Wixel introduction.
I have only had the Wixels for a few days, yet managed to get the basics working quite easily. If you are already familiar with microcontrollers etc. you should find it easy too.
I would have liked to demo the I/O Repeater app, but you really need two controllers to make that interesting, unfortunately I only have a lonely Arduino... :[
If you want to, you can easily go one more step and wire the Arduino to the remote Wixel in the same way as step 7, to wirelessly send serial commands to the Arduino. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
That is how I intend to control my robot, send commands from my netbook via the Wixels to have it FOLLOW MY ORDERS! Oops sorry..
My netbook is a convertable tablet, hence it will be straight forward to have a touch controled gui to control the robot and also to get status back such as battery levels, state of the sensors etc. But that will be another instructable.
Programming the PC side is straight forward. Get Microsoft Visual Studio Express (for either C#, C++, or Visual Basic) and write programs that use the SerialPort class to communicate with the Wixel. Use 'System.IO.Ports' see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.ports.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.ports.serialport.aspx (particularly the example at the bottom) and search the net and you should find other examples. I was pointed to http://www.serial-port-monitor.com/free-serial-port-monitor-product-details.html to help with developing serial programs, I've yet to try it, but though it may be helpful.
EDIT I've managed to use Visual C# - see next step for sample code /EDIT
If you want to get into the Wixels advanced features you can start at http://www.pololu.com/docs/0J46/10 , I have had a look at the SDK and the source of some apps. It seems straight forward for an experienced programmer, it is not however, as simple as the Arduino IDE.
With the existing apps it has plenty of uses, and keep an eye out for more apps, I'm sure there will be plenty of creative uses to come.
In fact I heard a wisper that they are very close to releasing a serial-to-I2C app for the Wixel that will make it easy to wirelessly interface with the many I2C sensors available out there, so keep an eye out, can't wait for that one!
So, I introduce the Wixel, an advanced, flexible and affordable wireless solution, well documented and easily implemented.
I commend it to you. Have fun...
-----------------------------------------------
(How's that for my first 'able?)
I have only had the Wixels for a few days, yet managed to get the basics working quite easily. If you are already familiar with microcontrollers etc. you should find it easy too.
I would have liked to demo the I/O Repeater app, but you really need two controllers to make that interesting, unfortunately I only have a lonely Arduino... :[
If you want to, you can easily go one more step and wire the Arduino to the remote Wixel in the same way as step 7, to wirelessly send serial commands to the Arduino. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
That is how I intend to control my robot, send commands from my netbook via the Wixels to have it FOLLOW MY ORDERS! Oops sorry..
My netbook is a convertable tablet, hence it will be straight forward to have a touch controled gui to control the robot and also to get status back such as battery levels, state of the sensors etc. But that will be another instructable.
Programming the PC side is straight forward. Get Microsoft Visual Studio Express (for either C#, C++, or Visual Basic) and write programs that use the SerialPort class to communicate with the Wixel. Use 'System.IO.Ports' see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.ports.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.ports.serialport.aspx (particularly the example at the bottom) and search the net and you should find other examples. I was pointed to http://www.serial-port-monitor.com/free-serial-port-monitor-product-details.html to help with developing serial programs, I've yet to try it, but though it may be helpful.
EDIT I've managed to use Visual C# - see next step for sample code /EDIT
If you want to get into the Wixels advanced features you can start at http://www.pololu.com/docs/0J46/10 , I have had a look at the SDK and the source of some apps. It seems straight forward for an experienced programmer, it is not however, as simple as the Arduino IDE.
With the existing apps it has plenty of uses, and keep an eye out for more apps, I'm sure there will be plenty of creative uses to come.
In fact I heard a wisper that they are very close to releasing a serial-to-I2C app for the Wixel that will make it easy to wirelessly interface with the many I2C sensors available out there, so keep an eye out, can't wait for that one!
So, I introduce the Wixel, an advanced, flexible and affordable wireless solution, well documented and easily implemented.
I commend it to you. Have fun...
-----------------------------------------------
(How's that for my first 'able?)
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