Created June 17, 2017 © GPL3+

Arduino 101 BLE Rover Bot

A bluetooth controlled rover you drive with your smartphone

IntermediateWork in progress5 hours46

Things used in this project

Hardware components

SparkFun RedBot Kit

Arduino 101

Adafruit Motor Shield v2.3

9V battery (generic)

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

Evothings Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015

Story

I recently joined Tampa Hackerspace as an intern and have really wanted to gain some experience with microcontrollers. With this in mind, Bill Shaw gave me an Arduino 101 and essentially said "Make something cool." I saw this as a perfect opportunity to make something which would teach me a lot about arduino and would also help me with another project I've been tasked with: making a deployable rover for SOAR (Society of Aeronautics and Rocketry) at USF. I decided I would make a remote controlled rover and after reading about the Arduino 101's Bluetooth Low Energy capabilities it just seemed like the natural choice.

When it came time to build, I had the plan for the software all laid out in my head and used a Sparkfun RedBot kit for the main bulk of the rover's body. The first thing I did was assemble the chassis (the instructions for which can be found here: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/12697 ). Once it was constructed to satisfaction (some parts could be excluded because I was not using the provided board) I added my Arduino board with motor shield attached via two flat head screws and nuts.

Then came time to write the code, which is broken into two pieces: the Arduino code and the HTML smartphone app (made with visualcode and evothings studio). Due to my lack of prior knowledge particularly with HTML, I wrote the code using snippets from example programs in both IDEs which were tweaked to suit my project's needs. The final result, as it currently stands, is a rover which can drive forwards, backwards, and rotate in either direction. I plan to add upgraded functionality in the future.

Code

Rover.ino

   #include <CurieBLE.h>
   #include <Wire.h>
   #include <Adafruit_MotorShield.h>
   #include "utility/Adafruit_MS_PWMServoDriver.h"

   BLEService roverService("8a559032-2639-4c03-ace5-b3d486d0c79d"); // BLE Rover Service

   // BLE Motor control Characteristic - custom 128-bit UUIDs, read and writable by central
   BLEUnsignedCharCharacteristic fwdCharacteristic("ecd48ec8-da9d-4dde-8f51-988c3fb23da8", BLERead | BLEWrite);
   BLEUnsignedCharCharacteristic revCharacteristic("e03c5901-9cef-47f3-a92c-09cc6ef8469b", BLERead | BLEWrite);
   BLEUnsignedCharCharacteristic leftCharacteristic("d1d5839e-6aaa-4823-a70d-75c3f1d3aa3e", BLERead | BLEWrite);
   BLEUnsignedCharCharacteristic rightCharacteristic("8fa3a0f3-9e30-4b68-ab85-57a907652ff4", BLERead | BLEWrite);


  // Create the motor shield object with the default I2C address
  Adafruit_MotorShield AFMS = Adafruit_MotorShield();  

  //Create motor objects
  Adafruit_DCMotor *rightMotor = AFMS.getMotor(2);
  Adafruit_DCMotor *leftMotor = AFMS.getMotor(1);


  int runspeed = 50;
  int turnspeed = 25;


void setup() {
   //begin initialization
   AFMS.begin();
   BLE.begin();

   BLE.setLocalName("Rover");
   BLE.setAdvertisedService(roverService);

   // add the characteristics to the service
   roverService.addCharacteristic(fwdCharacteristic);
   roverService.addCharacteristic(revCharacteristic);
   roverService.addCharacteristic(leftCharacteristic);
   roverService.addCharacteristic(rightCharacteristic);

   // add service
   BLE.addService(roverService);

   // set the initial value for the characeristics:
   fwdCharacteristic.setValue(0);
   revCharacteristic.setValue(0);
   leftCharacteristic.setValue(0);
   rightCharacteristic.setValue(0);
   
   // start advertising
   BLE.advertise();

   rightMotor->setSpeed(100);
   rightMotor->run(FORWARD);
   // turn on motor
   rightMotor->run(RELEASE);

   leftMotor->setSpeed(100);
   leftMotor->run(FORWARD);
   // turn on motor
   leftMotor->run(RELEASE);

}

void loop() {
  BLEDevice central = BLE.central();

  if (central) {
    // while the central is still connected to peripheral:
    while (central.connected()) {
      // if the remote device wrote to the characteristics,
      // use the value to control the motors:
      
      
      if (fwdCharacteristic.written()) {
        if (fwdCharacteristic.value()) {   // any value other than 0
          runspeed+= 50;
          turnspeed = 25;
          rightMotor->setSpeed(runspeed);
          leftMotor->setSpeed(runspeed);
          rightMotor->run(BACKWARD);
          leftMotor->run(BACKWARD);
        } else {                              // a 0 value
          runspeed = 50;
          turnspeed = 35;
          rightMotor->run(RELEASE);
          leftMotor->run(RELEASE);          
        }
      }

      if (leftCharacteristic.written()) {
        if (leftCharacteristic.value()) {   // any value other than 0
          runspeed = 50;
          turnspeed += 10;
          rightMotor->setSpeed(turnspeed);
          leftMotor->setSpeed(turnspeed);
          rightMotor->run(FORWARD);
          leftMotor->run(BACKWARD);
        } else {                              // a 0 value
          rightMotor->run(RELEASE);
          leftMotor->run(RELEASE);          
        }
      }

      if (rightCharacteristic.written()) {
        if (rightCharacteristic.value()) {   // any value other than 0
          runspeed = 50;
          turnspeed += 10;
          rightMotor->setSpeed(turnspeed);
          leftMotor->setSpeed(turnspeed);
          rightMotor->run(BACKWARD);
          leftMotor->run(FORWARD);
        } else {                              // a 0 value
          rightMotor->run(RELEASE);
          leftMotor->run(RELEASE);          
        }
      }

      if (revCharacteristic.written()) {
        if (revCharacteristic.value()) {   // any value other than 0
          runspeed+= 50;
          turnspeed = 25;
          rightMotor->setSpeed(runspeed);
          leftMotor->setSpeed(runspeed);
          rightMotor->run(FORWARD);
          leftMotor->run(FORWARD);
        } else {                              // a 0 value
          runspeed = 50;
          turnspeed = 25;
          rightMotor->run(RELEASE);
          leftMotor->run(RELEASE);          
        }
      }
    
  }

}
}

Credits

David Hoambrecker

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Thanks to Sparkfun.

Arduino 101 BLE Rover Bot

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Schematics

Arduino 101 Schematic

Code

Rover.ino

Credits

David Hoambrecker

Comments

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Arduino 101 BLE Rover Bot

Arduino 101 BLE Rover Bot

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Schematics

Arduino 101 Schematic

Code

Rover.ino

Credits

David Hoambrecker

Comments