Alternate Control Systems

[BBray_T1296]

Hey guys. I was wondering if there exists a pre-made communication system that suits my ignorant needs.

My goal is to create my own tele-presence vehicle, where I, from anywhere on a network, can control the robot while it is within a building's wifi range. I would have a wifi bridge on board the robot to capture that wifi signal for control, as well as for streaming camera footage back to my "base".

I am a hardware guy, and my programming is limited to AP Computer Science Java, and programming a vex robot in C++ (text based). I have no knowledge of, and little desire to learn, 'complex' programming I would need to use a Arduino/Raspberry Pi/etc for this application. I want to be able to figure out all the hardware stuff, the basic programming I will need to control the system, and have everything else already work.

I already own a VEX PIC v0.5 radio-based control system. If there was a "simple" way to link the remote to the micro-controller via ethernet (take the RJ11 out of the remote, go into a computer, transmit to another computer, then output RJ11 into the PIC) , that would by my most preferred solution. My second choice is to buy a Cortex or ARM "wifi" (not the useful kind) vex micro-controllers (I really like VEX. I can already do VEX.).

I could also envision remote-desktoping to a laptop on board the robot, which has the ability to control the robot somehow. That program on the laptop on the robot would be the part I need in this system.

I would be perfectly happy with using a cRIO, but from what I have seen looking over our programmer's shoulders, it is not something I want to have to deal with.

Thanks,
Brian Bray