Getting constant motor power with IR board

[jratcliff]

Originally Posted by Nightfall831

today i put the ir board on our robot after some preliminary testing and I have managed to get the robot to respond to the IR signals sent to the IR board.

however, the motors only run for as long as the IR board recieves a signal (less than a second)

our current code looks something like

if (rc_dig_in01)
     {
          pwm03 = pwm04 = 1;
          pwm07 = pwm08 = 255;
     }

i am not surprised at the result i am getting, but all attempts to create constant motion have failed. the only way i can think of is to have the remote cause a variable to be "true" and so that

while (variable = true)
     {
          pwm03 = pwm04 = 1;
          pwm07 = pwm08 = 255;
     }

or something to that effect

any suggestions?

You are on the right track. You should start developing routines that do things like 'go forward' and 'go left'. Next, when you get an IR signal you will set a variable that says which routines to run 'forward', 'left', 'stop' , etc. You will probably not be able to control the robot in real-time with the IR inputs.

Instead think if it as sending 'commands' that you will execute until told otherwise. There is going to be a lot of IR scatter and interference so don't expect to get a low latency response from the controller.

John