Help with linking OI and RC over Internet....

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by P1d40n3

We have 2 GW21W's, one connected to the Tether port on the OI, and one to the Tether port on the RC.

Ouch, you better be careful with this or you'll damage things. The tether port is NOT a standard serial port. Yes, it does use RS-232 to communicate with the RC (the radio modems use RS-422), but it also carries power and ground (think about how the OI powers up when you tether it). In addition, the OI and RC only switch over to using the tether when they detect that it is connected by monitoring the connections on the pins.

Bottom line is that you'd have to build an adapter for each side to make the right connections. And if you screw up there's a good chance you could fry a $500 controller.

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

9600bps Full Duplex

That's the throughput of the radios. They actually communicate with the OI and RC at 19200. As do the tether and dashboard ports.

The settings are 19200, no parity, 8 bits, and 1 stop bit, with no hardware or software flow control. But again, this really isn't a good thing to be experimenting with unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

some kind of emergency shut-off in case of packet drop

That's already built into the RC firmware. However, driving a robot which is not in direct view of the OI sounds really dangerous to me. If you're driving it out of range of the standard radio modems then it's probably too far away to be safe.