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This robot was controlled by an Arduino microcontroller connected to my Tablet PC by USB. The Tablet PC in this setup was serving as a byte relay enabling wifi adhoc control of the robot as well as streaming the video from the webcam to the controlling PC. The ultimate goal of this project was to eliminate the tablet by replacing it with a Linksys WRT54GL router which would communicate with the microcontroller over the serial protocol based on TCP/IP commands. Eventually, this robot might be equipped with sensors which will allow it to be programmed to run autonomously.

The first revision of the robot is featured in the video below:

This robot was extremely slow due to improper motor gearing. This was fixed resulting in much greater speeds (15mph) which had to be tested outside.
The laptop was also placed on a wooden mount for more stability.

Unfortunately, the latest revision of the robot was not filmed.

This project is currently on hold indefinitely, but may be picked up in the future.

This was the interface for controlling the robot on the remote PC which I programmed. It would convert a joystick location to two motor PWM output, not a simple task.

Interesting Fact: On it's first outdoor run (which was sadly not filmed), this robot had a mild crash with one of my friend's car leaving a battle scar on my tablet PC that is still there today.

 

This Christmas, I decided to automate our Family Room Christmas lights using my previously built Parallel Port 8 channel interface box. This box allows for the computer to control 8 different segments of lights via a transistor array and automotive relays.

The relay box was then hooked up to my Pentium 3 server which was placed behind the tree with a wifi connection to the network and internet.

This server allowed for light control via direct posts to its web server, UDP broadcasts from other computers in the network, and from local Remote Desktop commands to run various local programs.

I also designed a website in which anyone in my home network could control the lights via their web browser. This website also had public access enabled between the hours of 11pm and 5am during which anyone online could visit the webpage and control the lights. These hours were chosen in order to avoid annoying the family with excessive random light flashing.

Check out the video of the lights in action below: