iPhone Controlled R/C Car

We have already seen some very interesting applications for the iPhone such as the native iPhone Apps that made it possible to Control iRobot's Packbot, Unmaned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and iPhone Lego NXT Robo.

Its the turn of two brothers from Czech to demonstrate their engineering skills. Josef Prusa and his brother have figured out an interesting way to control their R/C car using iPhone's accelerometer.

Josef had this to say:

"Controlling is very easy with the iPhone 3G. It has five buttons, four of them you can use for traditional "driving" and when you press the last one, it unlocks the accelerometer control in the same way as in many driving games available on App Store."

They have used the iPhone App OSCemote to send Open Sound Control messages to a computer on the same network. iPhone App, OSCemote is available on iPhone's App Store.

The computer interprets these messages using Max/MSP into a simpler form and sends it through a serial port to Arduino.

Arduino is a simple development kit with microprocessor as seen in the screen shot below. Arduino processes the data from Max and next simulates switching using transistors to make the adjustments on real R/C controller to control the R/C car.

You can checkout the impressive video of Josef wheeling and spinning the R/Car by just tilting the iPhone below.

Though Josef claims it took them only one afternoon to get things working, the method appears to be quite complicated and definitely not for the faint hearted.

If you found this interesting and are brave enough to give it a shot then check out their website to get more details on the things required and how to get this working. As always do let us know how it goes.

Whats do you think?

[via Josef's blog] 

 

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