Remote controller

Hello everyone!
Now it’s time to introduce some information about, how we want to control this flying thing. Firstly, we need to have some wireless modules to be able to communicate with the main part of quadro by RF. The second thing which is necessary to do that, is the remote controller. Probably most of you have in childhood a toy, which was controlled using some kind of remote controller. This (the most popular) kind of controller looks like in the picture below (etc.).

Controllers such as this one, are commonly used with toys, remote controlled models, etc. They have some advantages and disadvantages. Let's focus on cons. They often are heavy, big and in my opinion quite awkward,  not to mention that you need to take out the batteries from the socket, put it into the charger, wait until they will be ready to use and again take them out from the charger and put into the socket. They also are quite expensive. Moreover, they have built-in wireless module which is working at a single bandwith. So, if we want to use that kind of controller in our project, we would have to buy it, take out from it all the electronic stuff (including wireless module) and put there our own. 

Referring to the following facts, we decided to use in our project well-known for everyone and also commonly used PlayStation 2 (PS2) game controller known as PS2 PAD (joypad, gamepad). It is shown below.

There are several advantages of such a solution. Firstly, it is quite cheap (we decided to buy unoriginal pad which cost only 20 zł). Secondly it’s convenient (or handy) and I think, each of us had it once in hands. It is light and we can use a battery and wireless module which we want to use, without throwing out any of original parts except the wire. Additionally, there is much more buttons, which can be useful  further (we are using some of them for now).

How to use the PS2 PAD to controlling quadro and how to connect and communicate whit PAD using µC (microcontroller), I’ll describe precisely in further posts. 

That’s all for today. 

Have a nice Easter! :)