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Asked — Edited
Resolved Resolved by thetechguru!

Wifi Robot

I got an elechouse TLG10UA03 kit which I have up and working now, but can't get ARC to connect to my EZ-B board yet.

I have verified that I can send and recieve characters thru the wifi TLG10UA03 link using the kits USB to Serial TTL converter with realterm on one computer and telnet to it over wifi on a second computer. Ascii text goes back and forth just fine. So my serial link is up.
I connected it to my robot with a 3.3V regulator as the power source (the ez-b 3.3V supply didn't seem to have enough current to make it work correctly) and I can see the wifi modules web page and get a connect with telnet to it. On telnet I never see anything come from the ez-b board and when I put in the ip address and port in the ARC connect box, ARC seems to indicate that it is connected but my robot does not appear to be recieving any commands. It does take a long time for ARC to come back with the connect which makes me think I am just getting a timeout. Not sure what piece of the puzzle I am missing. I have tried swapping the TX and RX pins between the EZ-B and the wifi TLG10UA03 link but the results are the same both ways. No feedback in a telnet session and ARC just says connected but no real connection is made.

So I am kind of stuck at the moment with that part of my project.

Also I have been looking for a wifi camera that can replace the current wireless one that is part of the ez-b kit.

I was wondering if something link the AI Ball Mini Wifi Spy Camera IP Wireless Camera would work with the ARC software to provide a true wifi robot. ( http://www.thumbdrive.com/aiball/ )

Any suggestion for the camera would be appreciated. I noticed someone had a camera working with X-Bee. Could that approach work with a wifi module? Not sure about interference with two wifi sources on the same frequencies on the robot.


I am trying to get a robot that can roam throughout my whole house and yard.


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#5  
Thanks for clarifying that Alan, I'm not sure where I read that the IP and Port worked OK so disregard that:)
#6  
@Rich said "Thanks for clarifying that Alan, I'm not sure where I read that the IP and Port worked OK so disregard that"

I think it was in the Elechouse thread where several of us were trying to get it working. I even reported that I could get ARC to see it that way, but I couldn't get it to talk, it kept disconnecting. I don't know if I posted my analysis of why it didn't work, but I did finally determine it is because it is giving its own greeting before opening the port tot he EZ-B, and ARC is reading something in that greeting as the firmware version being wrong, so it disconnects.

Also, I don't recall if it is the Elechouse WiFi or the USB TTL that came with mine, but one of them the TX and RX are mis-labeled or mis-wired and you don't do a crossover to make it work.

I am almost done with my home office renovation and will be able to get back to working on my robot and will have it on the bench so I can more accurately answer these questions.

Alan
#7  
Well the Virtual Com port did make a difference. I think it helped. I got ARC to say connected once, but I am still having difficulties. The robot did not seem to respond to any of the controls. ARC never said disconnected but it was acting that way.

I wish there was something I could type into realterm to get the EZ-B board to respond with its firmware version or something as a debug tool. This would allow me to at least see if I had baud rate issues or if it is a link reliability issue. As I could see if I am really getting data back and forth between my laptop and the ez-b board. There are laptop setting, Wifi router settings, elechouse wifi board settings, and wiring all involved in getting this to work. I think I am having a settings or wiring problem to the elechouse wifi board. I will be going back over my setting and wiring again. It may be a grounding issue. There really needs to be a tutorial done on getting wifi to work. At least with the recommended elechouse board.

Any thoughts on a simple (inexpensive hopefully) wifi camera that would work with ARC? I am starting to dabble with the motion tracking.

I thought about looking for a serial to ethernet adapter instead of the elechouse wifi board and putting a wifi game adapter or router on the robot. This would allow a standard ethernet camera and the ez-b to share the wifi link, but I would rather the robot be smaller and not have all the weight with the extra hardware.
#8  
The WiFi board must share the same ground that is used to connect to the EZ-B.
#9  
Made sure I had good grounding to wifi board and am now using the virtual serial port driver. I tried swapping tax and RX lines, but still no luck with the wifi module. I will keep trying this should work. Must be a setting problem as the module works when not connected to the ez-b. I still wish there was some character string I could manually send to the ez-b to get it to respond. So I could debug out side of ARC.
#10  
I burned mine out one night when I was too sleepy to be doing electronics. I forget if I gave it 5 volts or if I wired it backwards, but it does not have any protection for either. When I did, the WiFi still worked, but the transmit on the TTL Uart died (it still received, which didn't help in troubleshooting). I am not the only one of us who has fried one of these.

Unfortunately, I am again away from my computer, but I'll post a link tomorrow to a unit that some have had better luck with, and a post about configuring it. My replacement is still in its box on my workbench, but I hope to get to hooking it up soon. All my other parts are tested and ready for final assembly, just need a few hours free from other obligations to upgrade my box bot to my tread bot. Then I can get started on the real project (Steampunk K9).

Alan
Canada
#11  
@thetechguru I will be anticipating your project Steampunk K9(my project is Steampunk as well!)
#12  
This thread:
Elechouse WiFi thread has a ton of information about the Elechouse device. I'ss post again as soon as I find the thread that has the other device I was mentioning.

I also tried this device: Roving Networks WiFi and it does a lot of very cool things, but TTL Uart is not one of them:(

Alan
#13  
And here is the thread about another device that several people have had better luck with (and I have one sitting on my workbench waiting for me to install in my bot:
Better WiFi UART

Alan
#14  
I figured Out that ARC sends a couple for Hex 55 ASCII Letter "U" to the EZ-B board as part of its initial communications test. The EZ-B board seems to respond with a Hex A0. This is most likely part of the baud rate detection sequence. This was one of the things I was hoping to find out. I have tried manually sending a couple of Hex 55 ASCII Letter "U"s to the EZ-B board using realterm terminal software through the Bluetooth COM port and received the EZ-B boards A0 response back so now I have a simple way of checking out the wifi uart board for basic connectivity with the EZ-B board.
#15  
Thinking of making the robot communication switchable between bluetooth and wifi using a 4pdt switch. Found one at spark fun that looks good. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11153. I don't know as I really need the center off, but it should ensure that I never have both the wifi and the bluetooth connected at the same time.

The idea would be to use the wifi in infrastructure mode while the robot is at home and if he goes to visit someone he could connect to a laptop with blue tooth.

Anyone know of any wire length limitations on the EZ-B communication port?
#16  
Just got the wifi working with the virtual com port software. Still thinking of making it switchable between wifi and bluetooth. One secret was setting the com port and wifi module to 9600 baud. Grounding may have also played a part. Biggest thing I think is procedural. I found that I had to delete the virtual com port and recreate it whenever I powered off the wifi module.

Realterm was a nice test program to verify connectivity. I used it to verify I had the TX and RX wired up correctly and once I got the EZ-B to answer in realterm; it worked fine in EZ-Builider.

Thanks to all who helped be get this working. The EZ-B community is great.

Any thoughts on a wifi camera and making the EZ-B communcation switchable between bluetooth and wifi?
#17  
The camera controls in ARCs should let you select any camera, so if your PC has a connection to a wifi camera it should show up in the drop down list.

When you say "switchable between Bluetooth and wifi" can you expand on your idea?

If you want both on the same default I/o lines on the EZ-B board you'll need some sort of electronic controls to switch between the two, or manual controls at least. Then you'd probably need to refresh your connection the ARC software for the new communication method.
#18  
The idea is to normally use the wifi link set up in infrastructure mode so my robot could roam around the house. If the robot needs to visit someone (perhaps the local FIRST robotics team) he could be switched to Bluetooth. So a simple mechanical toggle switch would work for me. As mentioned previously I am considering a 4pdt switch. Gnd would be permanently connected to both the Bluetooth module and the wifi module. The 1st pole of the switch toggles between the Bluetooth tx pin and the wifi tx pin. The 2nd pole toggles between the Bluetooth RX pin and the wifi RX pin. The 3rd pole toggles +5V to the Bluetooth module and has no connection to the wifi. The 4th pole toggles +3.3V to the wifi module has no connection to the Bluetooth module. The sparkfun switch I mentioned earlier in the post has a center off position, which I don't need. The center off will make sure that the switch is break before make. Since the switch will only be toggled when the robot is switched off everything should work. In theory I could toggle between the two modules with the robot Live, but it is not something I need to do. I am considering putting both a wifi and the current ez-b camera on the robot to support both modes as. Well. After all a robot needs two eyes doesn't it?
#19  
Here is a Schematic of the ELECHOUSE TLG10UA03 as it is currently hooked up to my EZ-B board.

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More on the settings that worked for me. Based on one of the Posts that I was pointed toward with the excellent help, I set the the Elechouse board to 9600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit. (This is not the factory default). Before I attempted any wifi setup.
#20  
Here is a Schematic of the ELECHOUSE as currently hooked up to my EZ-B board.

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#21  
Here is a Schematic of the ELECHOUSE as currently hooked up to my EZ-B board.




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Same schematic just upload it twice by accident since the EZ-robot said told me it had an error. I have been getting it every time lately.
#22  
Here are the settings for the elechouse wifi uart using the elechouse uart configuration software. I have blocked out my specific information.




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Here is the more important part. Baud Rate Settings under advanced. Remember once the baud rate setting are saved to the elechouse you have to change your com port to match.


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#23  
At this point the Wifi Uart was up and running on the Wifi network and its web page is available. The URL is the IPaddress you set up using the elechouse uart configuration software.

The setting to turn it into a pass thru uart are next. The are done using the wifi uarts web server.

The settings should look something like this with of course the appropriate changes to match the wifi network.

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and the advance setting will look like this.

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The next step is the Virtual Com software.
#24  
The Virtual Com port software is available from this url:

http://www.hw-group.com/products/hw_vsp/index_en.

The setting on the virtual com port software should look like this:

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Note the port number is 6666 to match up with the basic setting in the wifi uart web page.

The other important setting on the virtual com port are:

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Be sure to save your setting using the save to ini button.

The next step for me was a test with realterm software to make sure the wifi uart was a true pass thru device.
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