Sine wave controller with smartphone app

[Seya]

Hi guys,

I would like to hear from those who have technical expertise.

If a controller was designed with radio capabilities, Could a smartphone utilize bluetooth connectivity to interface with it?

Specifically what would the design challenges be?

I believe this is usefull as it could eliminate the need for a bike mounted display.



Thanks

 

[cal3thousand]

Hi guys,

I would like to hear from those who have technical expertise.

If a controller was designed with radio capabilities, Could a smartphone utilize bluetooth connectivity to interface with it?

Specifically what would the design challenges be?

I believe this is usefull as it could eliminate the need for a bike mounted display.



Thanks

There's not much point into putting the electronics for this right into the controller since controllers can and do fail. With the failure of the controller, now 2 devices are dead instead of just one.

If you have a standalone item that did those functions, failure of a controller means only that. Speedict is a product that does exactly that. It gives you a good Bluetooth display and is modular, so you can move it from bike to bike and controller to controller.

 

[Burtie]

Any controller using an ASCII based UART interface can easily employ a commercial Bluetooth adapter, allowing a smartphone to be used as a control/monitoring terminal.

example:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=44910&start=125#p739147

Burtie

 

[Burtie]

Now that I have found my camera again, I can show some detail.

Here is the bluetooth radio adapter that I use;
To find these things, look for 'Bluetooth UART'


View attachment 3




I had to cut an apeture in the controllers aluminium housing for the bluetooth antenna to work:

View attachment 1



This feature may seem gimmmicky to some, but in practise I have found it extremely useful.
It allows me to easily change any of the controller settings while I am out riding, so is invaluable as a development and tuning aid 8)




Burtie

 

[TheBeastie]

Now that I have found my camera again, I can show some detail.

Here is the bluetooth radio adapter that I use;

I had to cut an apeture in the controllers aluminium housing for the bluetooth antenna to work:



This feature may seem gimmmicky to some, but in practise I have found it extremely useful.
It allows me to easily change any of the controller settings while I am out riding, so is invaluable as a development...

Burtie

Impressively nerdy. What controller do you use? I am assuming a premium one?

 

[Kingfish]

I experimented with BT on existing Trap controllers, essentially borrowing from the open-source code of XPD - although rewrote it so all the dependencies were XML-based lookup files so the end-user would never have to recompile every time there was a customization: My version was compiled as a .NET assembly, and vetted on both Windows 7 & 8, and WinPhone. The experiment worked great and I could program my dual-controllers from over 30 feet away. 8)

The second phase was to place the app onto Android, but it is here that my path faltered for I needed to learn Mono, a language that would have allowed same-source targeted builds for PC, Mac, and Android: The cost for the SDK (or related tech) was about $1k which at that time was a little too rich for my blood, plus the public IDE was very alien to work with… and I simply lost interest. Read: It was too much to spend for Freeware; I would have had to charge folks for the solution... and I just didn't think the Forum would be a large enough market for something so niche. :|

What I have works great for me, though it is a solution for PC-based exclusively and thus fails to achieve the utopian goal. Regardless, I like my user interface better. In short, with the right resources nearly anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

These threads below detail those efforts.
Controller Model # & Program
Handheld Serial Programming: USB or Wireless
Adding Serial BT to Windows for Dummies

Good hunting, KF

 

[Futterama]

I'm planning to add WiFi capability to my controller build. I got one of these:

http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?product=RN131
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/RN131G-I%2FRM/740-1028-ND/2071464

With this, I can either build an Android app that connects to the controller using TCP sockets directly, or better yet, build a simple webserver on the controller so it will be accessible from any WiFi connected device with a webbrowser.

The RN131 can connect to e.g. a smartphone even without an access point in between as it can act as an access point for the smartphone to connect to.