Control Vorpal robot with esp32 wifi

[vanle....@gmail.com]

i want to try controlling vorpal robot via websocket using esp32 wifi. bluetooth connection is very error prone so I think this idea will be better. Is it possible?

[vorpalrobotics]

Hello,

Although I have never tried it, there's no reason why it shouldn't be possible. It would probably take significant changes to the gamepad and robot code though.

Although bluetooth with have some packet errors here and there, it actually works very well with the hexapod. Our protocol has error detection and it simply ignores bad packets and assumes the prior command should just continue.  Since a new packet arrives every 100 milliseconds this works very well. If no valid packets are received for a full second the robot stops all motors until a valid packet arrives, as a failsafe. In practice this works in every environment I've ever run the robots in, and that includes huge maker faires where hundreds of people with bluetooth devices were in range of the robots. I've also run up to 15 hexapods in the same room with no control issues due to bluetooth's frequency hopping scheme.

[Mirek Novák]

Hi,

and what about building a "proxy" - Wifi side of ESP32 can "proxy" commands to BT side od ESP32 directly connected to robot. Just guessing its possible.

M.

Dne neděle 25. dubna 2021 v 20:00:37 UTC+2 uživatel vorpalrobotics napsal:

[vorpalrobotics]

Sure, that's one way to  do it.  There are just a small number of places where the code gets the data from bluetooth (on the robot side at least) so you could also just make a new function and replace it everywhere. There are more places on the gamepad side but a quick search and replace would take care of it. The new function could use #ifdef to select between bluetooth and wifi methods of transfer.