I hope to show and document how I was able to put together a web-controlled telepresence robot using cheap things I had around the house, plenty of duct-tape, and minimal soldering.
I was able to control this robot via my Raspberry Pi's GPIO, using a simple infrared transmitter:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/ir-remote-control-robot-beetle-kit-a00jt
The RasPi was set up as a webserver, serving up a web control-panel - with streamed view from a camera, and a text-box for text-to-speech!
I mention this in the Past Tense, because I actually managed to get all this done a couple of years ago...
However, I didn't get around to properly documenting it, and most of the documentation I -did- have (including a video of it in action) was lost in recent hard-drive-dropping incident :(
I intended to get this ready for the HackADay prize, but I see that it's already too late for initial submissions, before I've even started. Oh well, I won't bother hurrying now!
Components
1×
IR Remote Control Robot Beetle Kit
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/ir-remote-control-robot-beetle-kit-a00jt plus 4 AA batteries for power
1×
Raspberry Pi
1×
Raspberry Pi Camera Module
(I originally used a USB camera, but this should work better)
1×
Infrared LED
1×
BC548B transistor
Used to switch 5v-powered LED on and off via Raspi's GPIO
How's the project going along man? :)