Old RemoteControl
Contents
Historic Systems
The Elcano system can run autonomously or by remote control. There have been four systems built for manual or remote control.
Joystick
The first system used an APEM 9000 joystick. The part has five wires: 5V power, ground, and three analog lines. The joystick has two axes. The vertical axis is used for throttle (up) and brakes (down). The third analog signal is the voltage of the joystick when centered. The joystick was used in 2014 and is described in http://www.elcanoproject.org/tutorial/lab2.php. The Low-level code may still contain inputs and processing for an analog joystick.
Bluetooth
In 2015 students built a control system using a Bluetooth receiver to the Arduino. The transmitter was a TI Sitara running Android.
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) RC Controller
Elcano project used a custom-built radio control system with two arduinos, one in the remote control that collects manual inputs and transmits them with a 433MHz ASK radio transmitter, and one on the Elcano vehicle which receives the information sent over radio and converts it into an ElcanoSerial drive packet which is transmitted to C2 over ElcanoSerial. This information is used to manually drive the trike, begin an autonomous routine, or activate the emergency brake and stop the trike. The RH_ASK system was limited to 40 feet (12 meters) in practice and was never use to drive the vehicle.
