Is it possible to connect a wixel to android, then program an interface on the Android the send and receive commands on the android, to control a robot? Effective turning an Android phone to a remote?
Hello, shuhao,
In order for your Android device to communicate with a Wixel, it would need to have either a TTL serial interface or the capability to operate as a USB host.
If you want to control a robot wirelessly, you might want to consider using Bluetooth instead, as most phones already have Bluetooth capability built in. We sell a carrier board for a Bluetooth module that you could put on your robot to allow it to receive commands from the phone.
- Kevin
Yeah, a bluetooth module would have overblown our budget unfortunately.
But I know that android is based off Android, I’m not sure if it has the USB to TTL serial driver though. I’ll try to find out.
My question is: would a miniusb to microusb work (Dev handset is HTC Evo 4G)
The USB standard makes a distinction between “hosts” and “devices”. A computer generally fills the role of the host, and the things you would connect to the computer act as devices. The Wixel is a USB device, as is a USB-to-serial adapter, and phones with a USB interface are also usually devices. Because a host is required to initiate communication with devices, two USB devices cannot communicate with each other, so you cannot just connect a Wixel or a serial adapter to a phone and expect them to work together.
The one exception to this is if your phone can also be configured to act as a USB host (this is sometimes called USB On-The-Go). I am not sure if the HTC Evo 4G has such a capability (and if it does, whether software can be written for it to take advantage of it); it would be up to you to investigate this, as it is beyond the scope of what we can help you with.
Keep in mind that, if you decided to use Wixels, you would need to buy a pair of them (one for the phone and one for the robot), which would be about $40 plus the cost of whatever hardware you need to connect the phone to the Wixel. On the other hand, you would only need one RN-41 for your robot, since your phone has Bluetooth built in. The difference would be less than $20, and I think that using a Bluetooth module would be the easier solution for you by far.
- Kevin