Need alittle help w/ the IRremoteAppKit(well, a sorta AppKit)
DiablodeMorte
Posts: 238
First off, let me praise the mighty parallax gods, yet another beautiful and useful product: the IRremoteAppKit. I got a chance to use this last week @ a robotics thing I attended. It was very easy to get the boebot up and moving with this handy little kit. Sadly as with many things in the real world, I wasn't allowed to take the appkit with me when the confrence ended 
. Anyways, I was fiddling with my boe today and i thought: wouldn't it be cool to just build my own version of the kit? So I did, I grabbed one of the IR recievers that came with the boe bot, a resistor, and I went and found an sony controller. I hooked it up and ran the test code(the first one in: http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/compshop/IRremoteAppKit.pdf). The code seemed to work, it does detect key presses but this is where things start to go askew. The code only seems to detect the key presses some of the time, and even then after about 10 seconds it only displays any button press as a "1" or a "2". No matter what button I press I only get a "1" or a "2", sometimes the code does flash the correct button code but that is rare.
Any suggestions from the community?
I'm thinking that this controller doesn't output the same way the one in the kit does.
. Anyways, I was fiddling with my boe today and i thought: wouldn't it be cool to just build my own version of the kit? So I did, I grabbed one of the IR recievers that came with the boe bot, a resistor, and I went and found an sony controller. I hooked it up and ran the test code(the first one in: http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/compshop/IRremoteAppKit.pdf). The code seemed to work, it does detect key presses but this is where things start to go askew. The code only seems to detect the key presses some of the time, and even then after about 10 seconds it only displays any button press as a "1" or a "2". No matter what button I press I only get a "1" or a "2", sometimes the code does flash the correct button code but that is rare.Any suggestions from the community?
I'm thinking that this controller doesn't output the same way the one in the kit does.
Comments
I'm now rather convinced that it is a formatting problem w/ my remote. Just for the heck of it i added another check for a bit
and the code seems to pick up the right buttons more often, but some of the buttons now are completly screwed up
Pulse width modulation can be a little flakey!
First, there are about a billion (a slight exageration for effect) sets of Sony remote codes.
Second, be glad you do not have the remote that comes in the ap kit. I am sure it is made in the cheapest prison camps of china! It will perodically de-program itself and be sending God only knows when you press its buttons.
Third, order of and being careful not to duplicate case selects is important. Listed below are some of the constant definitions I used, some of the vcr constant definitions I did not use and a portion of the CASE ... SELECT DO ... LOOP I used at some point in time to control one of my robots (named Bob) . Please note these codes were consistent with my Sony universal programmable remote but may not be with yours. Sometimes you have to write a little code blurb to read what your IR remote is transmitting and display it with the DEBUG command.
' SONY TV IR remote constants for non-keypad buttons
Enter CON 11
ChUp CON 16
ChDn CON 17
VolUp CON 18
VolDn CON 19
Mute CON 20
Power CON 21
TvLast CON 59 ' AKA PREV CH
' SONY VCR IR remote constants
' IMPORTANT: Before you can make use of these constants, you must
' also follow the universal remote instructions to set your remote
' to control a SONY VCR. Not all remote codes work the same,
'so you may have to test several.
VcrStop CON 24
VcrPause CON 25
VcrPlay CON 26
VcrRewind CON 27
VcrFastForward CON 28
VcrRecord CON 29
' Function keys
FnSleep CON 54
FnMenu CON 96
'
[noparse][[/noparse] Main Routine ]
' Replace this button testing DO...LOOP with your own code.
DEBUG CR, "Press and hold a number key 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,", CR
DEBUG "or CH +/-, VOL +/- keys to control Bob."
DO ' Main DO...LOOP
GOSUB Get_Ir_Remote_Code ' Call remote code subroutine
SELECT remoteCode ' Select message to display
CASE 2, ChUp
PULSOUT 13, 850 'Forward
PULSOUT 12, 650
CASE 4, VolDn 'Rotate Left
PULSOUT 13, 650
PULSOUT 12, 650
CASE 6, VolUp 'Rotate Right
PULSOUT 13, 850
PULSOUT 12, 850
CASE 8, ChDn 'Backward
PULSOUT 13, 650
PULSOUT 12, 850
CASE 1 'Pivot Fwd-left
PULSOUT 13, 750
PULSOUT 12, 650
CASE 3 'Pivot Fwd-right
PULSOUT 13, 850
PULSOUT 12, 750
CASE 7 'Pivot Back-left
PULSOUT 13, 750
PULSOUT 12, 850
CASE 9 'Pivot Back-right
PULSOUT 13, 650
PULSOUT 12, 750
CASE ELSE 'Hold Position
PULSOUT 13, 750
PULSOUT 12, 750
ENDSELECT
LOOP ' Repeat main DO...LOOP
Hope that is helpful.