Controlling a robot using c++

[bluesteel]

Hi, guys. I am currently trying to develop a program made under c++ that could control a robot, i mean movement. I thought of using computer ports like serial or parallel which is not a bad idea. That's the first question: How to read and give output to serial and parallel ports.

Then, and if the previous is not a good choice, i would like to know how to use a wireless technology.In this area I HAVE NO IDEA HOW IT WORKS, so please tell me whether i will have to buy some kind of devices, and if so, how to make them work. This is a competition and the robots will have to fight against each other, so i'd rather make them work without cables and quite properly. Because of that it would be great to learn something about wireless. If you do not know about wireless, tell me about wired connections anyway.
Your help will be much appreciated

Kind Regards,
Paul

[bluesteel]

Preferently to work under WINDOWS XP

[Banfa]

Forget about parallel, I would say your 2 options are serial(RS232) or ethernet, weather they are wire or wireless is a transport medium decision not a transport protocol decision. That is you can run ethernet or RS232 over a wired or wireless link.

For RS232 I think you pretty much ought to be able to buy some off the shelf modules that will transmit and receive (in fact you can get off the shelf modules that will convert RS232 to wireless enthernet).

I problem with any for of wireless link is security, it is harder to disrupt or hack a wired link, with a wireless link a simple white noise transmission with enough power at the right frequency could be enough to cause you to loose control of your robot. With ethernet there is always the possiblility of an external source managing to find and connect to the ip address your robot is located at. None of these problems are so prevalent with a wired link.

It is worth contacting the competition organisers and asking what provision was been made for the arbitration of various wireless communications all operating at the same time, because I would assume that many other people will be doing the same thing.

[arunmib]

Controlling a robot, as far as I see is communicating with it's processor/controller from your computer. So, first see whether the processor/controller you use supports RS-232 or wireless communication. In my opinion most of the modern day processors/controllers support RS-232, RS-485, RS-422 .......stuffs. Next, investing in wireless communicator (if not supported by your processor/controller) would be a waste of resource (unless you NEED it). For controlling (transferring of data) there are communication protocols like SLIP, UDP and control can be obtained by setting the registers...For more information as how to proceed just go through your processor/controllers manual....

Correct me, if I have seen/said any point wrongly...

[JosAH]

I'd go for the 'BOB' way (Brains On Board). Test versions could of course have
their brains operational in another computer using whatever communication link,
but for the final version, I'd suggest a 'BOB'. There are very small motherboards
available that run Embedix, an embedded Linux version. It would be an interesting
project that way.

kind regards,

Jos