RobertL184
Resolved by thetechguru!
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.
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.
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
@thetechguru I will be anticipating your project Steampunk K9(my project is Steampunk as well!)
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
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
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.
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?
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?