Bluetooth Controls instead of R/C Controls for simple Holonomic robot

Question

I am new here and with little experience in robotics.

I have assembled this holonomic robot:

https://shop.wickeddevice.com/product/omniwheel-robot-complete-kit/

It has 3 Omni-wheels, 3 gearhead motors. It is controlled by a pre-programmed Arduino 1 with a custom motor shield. It is set up to be controlled with R/C inputs from standard radio control gears. I would like to replace the control via R/C inputs with Bluetooth ones. I would like to use the robot for research purposes and the R/C does do allow me the flexibility to have pre-coded functions to input in the computer. I would like to use the BlueFruit LE that comes with an IOS app.

https://learn.adafruit.com/bluefruit-le-connect-for-ios/controller.

The current set-up comes with a Motor Shield Library + Arduino Code, see links:

https://github.com/WickedDevice/WickedMotorShield

https://github.com/WickedDevice/OmniWheelControl/blob/master/OmniWheelControl.ino

My questions are: would you advise to use the current setup with Bluetooth? Would you advise to use another motor shield?

Thanks

Answer 1

Converting this setup to use BT might be quite costly and time consuming. I would recommend to keep using RC for the manual input, but put your experimental code into the Arduino, this way you may use all your hardware with the minimal changes and still get the job done.

Answer 2

There are many ways to interface an Arduino to BT LE.

There are many BT shields for the Arduino including the official one and Adafruit's. There are less expensive ones out there if you look.

If you're willing to do a bit more work, you could get a Raspberry Pi Zero-W (the 'W' is important!). The 'W' version of the Raspberry Pi Zero has built-in wireless and BT. I'd interface the two processors with I2C. You'd need to use a level shifter for the communications because the Pi is a 3v3 board while the Arduino is most likely a 5v device.