Does this idea sound plausible

[madmike159]

I am about to go into my 3rd year of my Electronic Engineering degree, and as part of that I will be taking part in a group project.

Out project involves making a remote control surveillance car with cameras, sensors etc. We also want it to be long range (i.e. more than the 10m or so you get with off the shelf RC cars). To achieve this we are planning to connect the car to the wifi on campus, so it can be controlled from a remote computer. The main operations of the car will be controlled with a PIC. What I want to know is how hard it will be to interface a PIC chip with a wifi module and send/receive data. If anyone has any advice about how to do this or what to use for it it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MATLABdude]

You'll probably be able to find a module that interfaces with WiFi, and connects to your microcontroller (or even an ARM or PC-104 stack) using some sort of serial (UART, I2C, SPI) or parallel connection. This will be just the raw output, so you'll have to have a TCP/IP stack running on said microcontroller / processor, in addition to whatever other authentication / program that interprets the commands and makes your car go.

If you're using PIC, Microchip has some literature / software:
http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2505&param=en535724

The Gumstix wifi module (ARM-based) or an Arduino wifi-shield modules probably push you along the design curve a little faster, depending on how much other software is out there. This probably includes authentication (WPA, WPA2, etc.) that you may need to get onto your school's wifi network (if your school is anything like mine).

So, if you want to do everything ground up: you may be hard-pressed (depending on how much prior experience you and your team mates have). If you're more hardware-based, I'd go with a simpler host-slave communications scheme (e.g. an RF UART modem or bluetooth or IR pair). If you're more software-based, I'd go with a pre-built microcontroller module with a very good level of software support for the low-level TCP/IP functionality.

DISCLAIMER: I have not actually built my own IP-device, but have advised a number of (basic) projects that have had varying levels of IP-functionality.

 

[Studiot]

Suggest you check through back issues of Elektor and other electroncis (mags). I'm pretty sure there was a design for a wifi interface for microcontrollers in the last couple of years.

Since you will need to broadcast as well as receive, you will need to check you local wireless regulations about this. Perhaps someone in your group already has a licence?

go well

 

[Blenton]

Use an arduino with a wifi header?