Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 10. Going Truly Mobile - the
Remote Control of Your Robot
Now that your robot is mobile and has several ways of sensing the outside world, you'll
want to disconnect it from the tether cable that you have been using to communicate with
it. In this chapter, you'll learn how to communicate wirelessly with your robot. Depending
on your choice of method, you'll be able to communicate across the room or across a dis-
tance of up to a mile. Specifically, we'll cover the following topics:
• Connecting Arduino to a simple
radio frequency
(
RF
) transmitter/receiver pair
• Connecting Arduino to an XBee transmitter/receiver pair
• Connecting Arduino to a Bluetooth transmitter/receiver pair
• Connecting Arduino to a Wi-Fi network using a Wi-Fi shield
As your Arduino will now be remote, you'll need to power it with an external source. Your
Arduino will need at least 250 mA, but you might want to consider providing 500 mA to 1
A based on your project. To supply this from a battery, you can use one of several different
choices. One choice is a 4 AA battery pack, like the one used to power the DC motors on
the wheeled robot in
Chapter 6
,
Controlling DC Motors
. Alternatively, you can also use an
trolling Servos with Arduino
.
You can also use a simple USB battery, like the ones used to charge cell phones during an
emergency, as shown in the following image:
