ubiq_uitous communication, wearable and multimedia systems

A LEGO Mindstorms NXT connects to an Arduino via I2C.

This enables all kinds of new (intelligent) sensor / actor combinations. Also - the NXT provides Bluetooth wireless connectivity.

A Symbian S60 Nokia E71 connected to an Arduino Mega via Bluetooth.

The E71 may also be used as a “gateway” with an uplink via WLAN or GSM - which basically make the LEDs switchable from everywhere in the world. This photo illustrates a potential usage scenario with a remote controlled vehicle.

Using the standardized Arduino boards and development environment can speed up things - while still being cost-efficient and flexible.

This is work in progress - the vehicle will soon be controlled via a Bluetooth link.

Just to give an idea.

Integration of Bluetooth and servo control code still to be finished.

The DisplayLink display also works with an NSLU2 (running Debian) and a beagleboard.

The beagleboard can use the binaries generated on the NSLU2.

The photos have notes on Flickr.

As part of attaching a full graphic LCD display via USB / DisplayLink - I made some experiments with an ASCII only version, aka
SlugTerm.

The FTDI USB245BM provides parallel output to its data lines and is e.g. supported by the lib-ftdi library on Debian.

The photos have notes on Flickr.

Adding external displays via USB is a quite flexible option.

Started with the original support on Win and OSX - but aim to use this on Linux with e.g. a beagleboard.

A Bluetooth enabled zeemote JS1 controls a servo - no PC involved - there’s just an ATmega8 micro controler coordinating things.

The photo has notes on Flickr.

Whereas originating an RFCOMM connection from a Linux system using the Bluez stack was familiar to me - I never did things the other way round.

The screenshot shows how a serial connection gets advertised with sdptool, a OSX system connects using minicom and finally there is a duplex connection with the “screen” utility on the Linux side.

Best viewed on Flickr in “original size”.

Assembled two versions of a robotic vehicle that uses a mobile phone (Android G1 or Symbian S60 Nokia E71)

The first version uses an Android G1 - may communicate via its serial port or Bluetooth.

The second version makes use of Python running on recent Symbian S60 devices. It may use Bluetooth or IrDA for the “phone 2 motor control” communication path.

The photos have notes on Flickr.