Control your Raspberry Pi Robot Wirelessly!

• Tweet
• Pin It

If you’ve got a Raspberry Pi computer and an Android phone, then building a remote-controlled robot could be easier than you think, courtesy of Blue Dot.

Blue Dot links the Pi to an Android app that displays a blue dot on the handset. This blue dot can interact with a wide variety of Pi-connected hardware. It is an android app (client) and really easy to use Python library which allows you to wirelessly control your Python projects, whether that is a light switch, remote camera, robot or anything else you can think of!

The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s official blog has published a link to a code snippet called a ‘Recipe’ that allows Blue Dot to control a wheeled bot.
Once this wiring and software setup is complete, the Blue Dot app should be able to turn the robot and drive it forward and backwards by pressing appropriate points around the edge of the blue dot. A slightly more advanced Recipe allows the app to precisely control the robot’s speed and direction.

Getting started with Blue Dot, a Python software library, is relatively straightforward, with instructions available here. The instructions assume the Pi is running the latest version of Raspbian with the Pixel desktop and the app requires a phone running Android 4.0.3 or newer.

The Blue Dot robot recipe also relies on GPIO Zero, a Python software wrapper that simplifies the process of writing code to allow the Pi to interact with hardware via its GPIO pins.

If you are wondering why there is no iOS app? Its because iOS doesn’t support Bluetooth serial comms; you can only really talk to ‘standard devices’

Related Posts

• 

  Creating a controller for Minecraft with realistic body movements using Arduino
  Creating a controller for Minecraft with realistic body movements using Arduino
• 

  Wireless Power Transfer
  Wireless Power Transfer
• 

  Learn How to Design and Control a Robotic Arm with Arduino and Fusion 360
  Learn How to Design and Control a Robotic Arm with Arduino and Fusion 360
• 

  How to emulate an Xbox controller with Arduino
  How to emulate an Xbox controller with Arduino