Adriano, the Arduino 2WD Robot | Step 2 (Remote Controlled)


[Everything in this robot is built from scratch, no kits used (except for the chassis).]

I finally found the time to add remote control capability to the robot I had created around this time last year. Check out my earlier blog entry for details on how I created the core robot.

After building the core robot (see link above) and getting it working, I decided that the next best step would be to add remote control capability to it so that it could be moved around as desired. I decided to try the Vishay TSOP4838 infrared remote receiver/sensor. I first created a proof of concept for the remote and the receiver.


Even though I have several remotes at home, I decided to buy a cheap and simple remote just for the robot so that I could do all of my testing without interrupting those at home who wanted to watch TV. As it turns out, any infrared remote can be made to work with the robot. Just get your program to spit out (to the serial console) the received raw codes from the remote for each key. Then you can program the actions you want the robot to take in response to each key. I ended up programing the arrow keys (forward, backward, left, right) and the OK key (stop). The Comcast remote turned out to be the most usable of the lot due to the size and placement of its arrow keys. Everything works reasonably well. Occasionally the remote seems to ignore a remote key press even though the key press is received. I added an LED to indicate when a key press is received so that I know whether the key press wasn't received or whether the key press was just ignored. In the cases where the key press is ignored, I'm guessing that their the Arduino is too busy to process the key press or the key press code got mangled due to interference and the code received was not a code that the program recognized. This is a good topic for further research/investigation.

Anyhow, here's how I integrated the remote capability into the core robot I had build earlier.


Click here to view the other steps in this series.

Step 1 (Basic Operation)

Step 3 (L293D Controlled)

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