When we talk about wireless robot vehicles, we usually think about the RF circuits. But this project is different. It uses a mobile phone to control the motion of a robotic vehicle, and therefore, the range of operation is as large as the coverage area of the service provider.
This robot vehicle can be driven over the internet or with a laptop wirelessly up to 500 m. The vehicle has an embedded network camera that transmits a live video to the user so that it can be driven without line of sight. It also has a built-in horn to honk at people on the way.
The motion of the vehicle is controlled with the onboard PIC16F628A microcontroller that receives the commands from the remote user through a Linksys WRT54GL router. The communication between the microcontroller and the router is a standard serial interface.
This is an interesting voltmeter project that display the measured voltage on a TV screen, in giant digits as well as with analog bar. It also records the maximum and minimum values of measurements. The project was built by Alberto Ricci Bitti and was published in the May 1999 issue of Elektor Electonics.
A varieties of serial LCDs from different manufacturers are available in the market. But if you are good at PIC programming you can make one by yourself. The most popular and low cost LCDs for embedded projects are HD44780 based character LCD modules. They are parallel LCDs because they recieve display data from microcontrollers in parallel format. Their interface require at least 6 I/O pins of a microcontroller. By including an additional microcontroller to your HD44780 LCD module you can convert it to a serial LCD. The idea is very simple. The extra controller will receive the display data from the host microcontroller in a serial format and provide it to the LCD module in an appropriate parallel format. With the new LCD module, you would be able to send the display data with just one wire.
Here’s a project that uses a PIC16F88 microcontroller working as a display controller for serial to parallel conversion of display data. The demonstrating software is written in C and compiled with mikroC.
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This is an experimental board for ATTiny2313 microcontroller that provides a 10-pin connector for in-circuit serial programming, and other header pins to access I/O pins. The AT2313 microcontroller runs on an external 10Mhz crystal. The board has a push button reset switch for resetting the microcontroller. The onboard regulator provides a +5V DC to the microcontroller. The board is also featured with a DB9 connector to communicate with a PC through RS232 port. The TTL to RS232 level translation is achieved through a MAX232 chip. The circuit for this board is very simple to build, and the PCB layout is also available. This is a good board for learning AVR microcontroller.
