James Newton
ESP's web servers provide great UI's
The San Diego Makers Guild has provided literally hundreds of low cost robots to kids at events. These are based on the NodeMCU (ESP32 or 8266) devices, with a couple continuous rotation servos and a battery pack, programmed with a web server accessible via direct WiFi connections, which allowed them to be controlled by a web page on a cell phone or PC. There are many advantages:
- $5 chip, a pair of $5 continuous rotation servos, and a $2 battery pack. All the display, controls, user interface, etc... are on the SmartPhone
- Very clean, responsive, and fun remote control interface, without any app to install; just uses the browser on the phone. This video explains it pretty well. It's from a time when we were using the bots in a combat league.
- You can serve any static web page, so not only the basic remote control interface, but also your own custom version, settings, and even a simple web based IDE to edit the files on the ESP; it becomes a mobile webdev platform!
The use of the ESP chips to host web pages for smartphones is a great trick but... it's a bit of a trap, in that it's limiting.
No web services, no access to sensors:
It doesn't allow one to use the phone to contact the internet in general, and worse than that, you can't put the phone ON the robot /and/ use the sensors in the phone from a web page unless the web page is https with a valid certificate. The browsers security won't allow it.
Which means you either have to write an app, or install a cert on the ESP (nightmare) or connect the ESP to your house WiFI (which is VERY insecure and just a general bad idea) or... you have to just live without the camera, mic, accelerometers, GPS, compass, etc... all the wonderful sensors that the phone can give us. Which is a huge loss, because they can tell the robot what is around it, that it bumped into something, what direction its moving, where it is, etc.. Not to mention sending pictures to google for classification of objects or sending sound to recognize verbal commands, etc...
If not WiFi...
Instead, let's connect the smartphone to the robot some other way so we can still just use a web page, avoid an app, and run on the net. But what ways can we connect?
- Bluetooth Low Energy is horrible unreliable. Getting every model of phone to pair correctly is a nightmare, and... sending data from a web page to a BLE device isn't supported anyway. And you need a device that supports it, so it really limits your controller choices.
- We could use Bluetooth audio... but again, not reliable, and quite hard to decode on the robot. And you need a controller that manages it.
- USB OTG is poorly supported; many phones just don't do it. Also, it's an electrical connection, and if a kid (or someone like me) wires it wrong, dads expensive smartphone can go up in smoke. Maybe. And... you can't send data to USB serial from most browsers.
- We could use the headphone jack, but again, not all phones have it. And it's a (minor) electrical risk.
But, you know what all phones DO have? And can't be blocked? And doesn't require permissions or anything to access?
A screen.
Der Blinkenlights
We can build a circuit that senses light. And a web page can blink out messages at VERY high frame rates these days. So I've written a page that uses light blocks to send data and some people have designed and built electronics for it:
https://hackaday.io/project/4196-2wire-i2c-from-blocks-of-light-on-an-lcd-screen
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/io/serial/i2c/withGIFs.html
By doing that, we can
1. Write a web page (e.g. on github.com which provides a good cert, and so can access your phones sensors)
2. Blink out messages to a /really/ low end processor (e.g. Arduino UNO) to control a pair of continuous rotation servos, etc...
3. In the Javascript on the page, we can use the phones sensors to control the robot locally, send data to cloud...
Dan Shaurette
Hacker◎184263
Jason Bowling
Haha, very cool hack. I'll have to start thinking of other places where a phone can provide data contactless.