For the past few months I’ve been working on a Strandbeest project (featured on Hackaday here) that I plan to get to walk under motor control. I also plan to have a head and tail assembly that can pan and tilt, as well as quite a bit of lighting. Though this isn’t my first foray into this type of contraption, I’ve never actually used a microcontroller to get these ‘beests to walk around, instead opting to use a heavily modified quadcopter for the brains of one, and “traditional” R/C equipment for the next.
This one though will be too complicated to easily control this way, and I’m thus opting to use an Arduino Mega as the brains of the device, along with an HC-06 Bluetooth module for communication. Interaction with the board has been surprisingly straightforward so far. You simply hook up the HC-06 to power and the appropriate Rx/Tx pins, then use an app to send it serial commands. I’ve had some success so far, and am excited about the control possibilities.
One thing that is a bit inconvenient is the fact that I need an Arduino with a separate board for the Bluetooth module. There is always the possibility of it getting disconnected, and if space was an issue, that would be quite inconvenient. Though it wouldn’t have been appropriate for my project, the BlueDuino Rev2 board solves this issue in a Nano-sized form factor. Now you don’t have to worry about hooking an extra chip up; BLE capabilities are already included. The board looks like a great solution for simple IoT and control challenges!
Bluetooth Control! [full video]
