Pinky: Android RC control over Bluetooth to Arduino Nano PR2040 Connect.

 For remote control of Pinky the octobot I had a choice of wifi, Bluetooth, or an old drone TX and RX set up. I'm choosing to go with Bluetooth because everybody with a phone has the capability in their pockets. The old drone RX/TX setup would require additional components and take up internal cavity space in the robot. After two nights of testing I finally got BLE working last night by following these resources:

• Arduino RP2040 BLE tutorial
• Arduino BLE Library info
  
• MIT app inventor BLE basic tutorial
• AppInventor BLE documentation
  
  

Tonight, 8/11/22, I'll try and build a joystick and control scheme into the app inventor to push command controls to the Arduino. After that, I'll try to port Pinky's old micropython codebase to the Arduino programming language and convert all of its classes to headers....

• MIT app inventor joystick example

Update:8/13/2022

Finally got an app I am okay with.

The code is vast, so if you want to see it, just download it to view it outside your browser.

Time to start working on the arduino code.

#include <ArduinoBLE.h>

#include <Arduino_LSM6DSOX.h>

BLEService RCService("27810000-4786-42e7-bd27-45257b2e988f"); // BLE LED Service

// BLE AppInventorRC Characteristic - custom 128-bit UUID, read and writable by central

BLEIntCharacteristic RC_AngleCharacteristic("27810001-4786-42e7-bd27-45257b2e988f", BLERead | BLEWrite | BLEWriteWithoutResponse);

BLEIntCharacteristic RC_SpeedCharacteristic("27810002-4786-42e7-bd27-45257b2e988f", BLERead | BLEWrite | BLEWriteWithoutResponse);

BLEIntCharacteristic RC_HeightCharacteristic("27810003-4786-42e7-bd27-45257b2e988f", BLERead | BLEWrite | BLEWriteWithoutResponse);

BLEIntCharacteristic RC_RotationCharacteristic("27810004-4786-42e7-bd27-45257b2e988f", BLERead | BLEWrite | BLEWriteWithoutResponse);

int LastSpeed = 0;

int LastAngle = 0;

int LastHeight = 0;

int LastRot = 0;

int tick = 0;

bool CentralConnected = 0;

//IMU

float x, y, z;

void setup() {

  Serial.begin(9600);

  // begin initialization

  if (!BLE.begin()) {

    Serial.println("starting Bluetooth® Low Energy failed!");

  }

  // set advertised local name and service UUID:

  BLE.setLocalName("Pinky_RX");

  BLE.setAdvertisedService(RCService);

  // add the characteristics to the service

  RCService.addCharacteristic(RC_AngleCharacteristic);

  RCService.addCharacteristic(RC_SpeedCharacteristic);

  RCService.addCharacteristic(RC_HeightCharacteristic);

  RCService.addCharacteristic(RC_RotationCharacteristic);

  // add service

  BLE.addService(RCService);

  // start advertising

  BLE.advertise();

  Serial.println("Pinky Peripheral, waiting for connections....");

  //IMU stuff

  if (!IMU.begin()) {

    Serial.println("Failed to initialize IMU!");

    while (1);

  }

    Serial.print("Gyroscope sample rate = ");

  Serial.print(IMU.gyroscopeSampleRate());

  Serial.println(" Hz");

  Serial.println();

  Serial.println("Gyroscope in degrees/second");

  Serial.println("X\tY\tZ");

}

void loop() {

  // listen for BLE peripherals to connect:

  BLEDevice central = BLE.central();

  // if a central is connected to peripheral:

  if (central) {

    if (!CentralConnected){

      Serial.print("Connected to central: ");

      // print the central's MAC address:

      Serial.println(central.address());

      // while the central is still connected to peripheral:

      CentralConnected = 1;

    }

   

    while (central.connected()) {

      //Serial.print("Waiting for the write thing: ");

      //delay(100);//This causes hangs / crashes

      if (RC_AngleCharacteristic.written() || RC_SpeedCharacteristic.written() || RC_HeightCharacteristic.written() || RC_RotationCharacteristic.written()) {

        //Debounce the BLE

        if (LastAngle != RC_AngleCharacteristic.value() || LastSpeed != RC_SpeedCharacteristic.value() || LastHeight != RC_HeightCharacteristic.value() || LastRot != RC_RotationCharacteristic.value()){

        tick++;

        Serial.println(tick);

        Serial.print("Angle: ");

        Serial.print(RC_AngleCharacteristic.value());

        Serial.print(" Speed: ");

        Serial.print(RC_SpeedCharacteristic.value());

        Serial.print(" Height: ");

        Serial.print(RC_HeightCharacteristic.value());

        Serial.print(" Rotation: ");

        Serial.println(RC_RotationCharacteristic.value());

        LastAngle = RC_AngleCharacteristic.value();

        LastSpeed = RC_SpeedCharacteristic.value();

        LastHeight = RC_HeightCharacteristic.value();

        LastRot = RC_RotationCharacteristic.value();

        }

       

      }

      // if (IMU.gyroscopeAvailable()) {

      // IMU.readGyroscope(x, y, z);

      // Serial.print(x);

      // Serial.print('\t');

      // Serial.print(y);

      // Serial.print('\t');

      // Serial.println(z);

      //}

    }

    if(CentralConnected){

      // when the central disconnects, print it out:

      Serial.print(F("Disconnected from central: "));

      Serial.println(central.address());

      CentralConnected = 0;

    }

  }

 

}