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Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 08:24
by robotrandi
Exactly (I assume doc-helmut is just playing with me ! :D ).
The great thing about the WiiMote IR camera is that it's not just a simple camera, but has an integrated uC which gives you over I2C directly the coordinates of 4 IR spots, together with their sizes (proportional with distance).
This is great, especially on a small processor as you don't have to do any image processing, you just get directly and for free the relevant information !

I really love Wii periperals, they are so hacker friendly !!

Dan

Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 08:51
by HaWe
ooops, didn't recognize that wii thing, srry :oops:

Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 14:53
by nxtreme
robotrandi wrote:I really love Wii periperals, they are so hacker friendly !!
I agree!
doc-helmut wrote:ooops, didn't recognize that wii thing, srry :oops:
That's fine, we all miss things every once in while.

Your tank has been featured on the Hack-A-Day blog, congrats! (I probably waste far too much time on Hack-A-Day... over an hour in the past week!)

Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 15:03
by robotrandi
yep hack-a-day is one of my favourite sites too, so I'm quite happy with my project having been featured there...

I have another, older, project centred around a NXT, which looks much more Lego-ish than the tank. Still a fair amount of home brew, but overall it might please you "Lego fans" much more ... :)

http://trandi.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/ ... no-i2c-ir/

I don't know if it's worth creating a new topic to share it... ?
dan

Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 16:30
by hergipotter
Can you also interface the wiimote directly with the nxt via the nunchuk jack or do you have to get the IR Sensor out of the wiimote?

Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 16:41
by robotrandi
Nope, or at least I couldn't...
The WiiMote jack is a different I2C bus that the one that connects to the camera.
The WiiMote main uC is the master on that one and it expects data from the Nunchuck and other periperals.
So THEORETICALLY, if you could flash the main controller then yes you could make it to read the data from the camera on one bus and then post it on another... but I've never seen anybody doing it...

Besides, in my case, I really like the small form factor, I wouldn't want to have the whole WiiMote sitting on the turret :) But I agree it would be nice and quick / easy...

dan

Re: Autonomous RC Tank controlled by a NXT brick

Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 17:12
by hergipotter
thx for your answer!

Yeah it would probably not look too cool with a wiimote on the turret :D
I'd just like to play around with the wiimote and the IR receiver but i don't want to rip my wiimote apart... ;)