Any good SkyNet starts with a robot. Well, we are in luck…User “badcat89″ posted in our forum about a Web-enabled, Wireless Robot that is controlled via a web interface. We can imagine a swarm of robots controlled by data received from the web.
Web Powered Robot
The robot uses a pair of serial bluetooth adapters to form a wireless link with the ioBridge IO-204. The serial levels of the IO-204 are TTL and a circuit using the MAX-232 was required to allow the serial interface work properly. On the robot is a set of serial servo drivers that control the steering and speed.
IO-204 and Serial Bluetooth Adpater
The interface is standard web page using an embedded ioBridge.com serial widget to make the connection to the IO-204 base station module. You can control the direction and throttle by clicking on the itnerface and using the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard. The interface generates serial strings that the serial servo drivers react to when received. You can see the strings and the serial widget in the debug part of the web interface.
Web-based Robot Controls
Here is a YouTube video of the web powered robot in action -- looks like a lot of fun to drive. One step closer…
Eric Edwards of EJESolar.com created a system that takes solar energy and heats water for his home. He uses Sun Strip Solar panels to heat the water. With a single solar panel Eric is able to heat a 60 gallon tank to temperatures beyond 160°F. He uses the ioBridge IO-204 to data log and actively monitors the water heating system by getting alerts and updates on his mobile phone.
Water Tank and ioBridge IO-204
ioBridge IO-204 with Temperature Sensors
Eric monitors and data logs the temperatures of the the hot water storage tank, the collectors, and the outside temperature in real-time using the ioBridge IO-204 and temperature sensors. This data allows Eric to calculate BTUs collected per day and translate into a dollar figure to track savings. He has surrounded himself with the data to make sure there is no system damage, freezing, etc., by creating a web site to view the data, setting ioBridge message alerts, and using a Google Gadget to display the temperatures collected by the IO-204.
Visit EJESolar.com to see a live view of the data collected by the solar hot water system as well as some more details behind this solar hot water heating system. Ingenious!
Screen Shot of Solar Array and Collected Data (EJESolar.com)
Thomas W. Lewis produced two excellent projects to remotely control his HVAC system and monitor his home power usage.
He wanted to turn off his HVAC system completely before leaving for an extended period of time, like going on vacation, and then turn it back on just before he gets to his house. Thomas found the controls wires on the thermostat and uses a relay to turn on or off the thermostat. He made it remote controllable with the ioBridge IO-204 module and control widgets placed on a mobile phone.
HVAC and Thermostat Control with the ioBridge IO-204
In additional to remotely being able to shut down his HVAC system, Thomas also monitors his temperature and whole house power using the analog inputs of the IO-204. He used AC clamps around the house power mains to get a power utilization relative to the current through the wires.
Power Monitoring for the Whole House
More details and photos are available on Thomas’ Smart Grid section of his blog.
LaserPup is burning up the Internet. Joe of laserpup.com has created an interactive, Internet controlled and monitored pet toy, for his fluffy dog Skyler. Joe can log into an “iPhone friendly web app” that allows him to watch his dog from work, click a button to sound off a buzzer, and play with the dog using a laser pointer by clicking around his web interface. The system uses a couple of servos for x and y axis movement of the laser pointer and a few ioBridge widgets to make things work in the web app. Some dogs and cats love the laser pointer, chasing the light source all around -- it’s healthy, fun exercise for pets in moderation.
When we first heard of the project, we thought this has something to do with dogs doing epic battles with lasers (nice Star Trek and ‘Skyborg’ reference, btw), but this is a very practical project. On the laserpup.com you will find a video, instructions, screen captures, and all of the de-tails to make your own Internet controlled pet toy for dogs and cats (I have to believe they will love it too). Awesome project Joe and thanks for sharing LaserPup with all of us. This YouTube video, enhanced with some Daft Punk, says the rest.
Polymythic released another amazing project using his favorite microcontroller (the Arduino) and the ioBridge IO-204 driving the interface. The context for Steve’s latest project is “How do I get the Arduino and ioBridge to work together?” and “My friend wants to shot Airsoft targets in his house”. When you combine those two thoughts you end up with an automated, in-house Airsoft target range. He loads up a target program using a web page (via his iPod Touch) which sends command via the IO-204 to the Arduino which in turn controls servos that have target faces on them. By the looks of the Wolfenstein perspective in the video, the system looks fun to play with.
The interaction between the Arduino and the ioBridge IO-204 is done by using the PWM output of the ioBridge servo module to a PWM input on the Arduino. The interface is a web page of widgets that when clicked, sends a specific PWM output value. When you click a button, “800″, the ioBridge servo board sends “800″ to the Arduino and the Arduino executes a function in a look up table. The Arduino also triggers an output pin that is sent back to the ioBridge module to tell the ioBridge module it’s ready for another command. Very clever.
Check out the “Arduino/ioBridge Airsoft Target Range” blog post on Steve’s Polymythic Blog for a full write up on the project, Arduino source code, and a full-length instructional video — the whole shooting match. You can also find a few posts on his blog about weaving and bow making and the original Serv O’Beer project.
Posted in Source Code by iobridge
December 20, 2008
The iPod Touch and iPhone have an accelerometer that adjusts the screen orientation (among other things). You can tap into the orientation and execute widgets depending on the orientation of the device by using a simple HTML file with some Javascript. Put an HTML file on a web server that you can get to on your iPod Touch or iPhone.
Part of the Apple Web Kit is the command “onorientationchange”. We will use that to detect the orientation change and call a script called “updateOrientation()”.
Add the following command to the BODY tag:
1
onorientationchange="updateOrientation();"
Place the following function in the HEAD of the document and call certain widgets at the specific orientation angles of 0°, -90°, and 90°. You can call any type of widget adjusting the position of a servo, controlling a digital output, or setting the state of an X10 widget.
Stephen from the iPhone Dog Feeder fame, sent us a video of how to use the x10 controller with the ioBridge module to control lights. He has a lamp setup in his lab that he can control from his Cygnet blog and his ioBridge dashboard.
Here is the YouTube video of the x10 smart board in action:
