IFI Control System to Wifi?

[RyanCahoon]

An RS-232 cable will not work with the OI/RC link, because it runs over RS-485 (both the Tether and Radio ports). The common knowledge on CD seems to be that using RS-232 hardware with RS-485 a) will not work and b) potentially could damage hardware on both sides.

I played around a bit with controlling an IFI bot over wifi, but I took a different approach: Put both the OI and RC on the robot, as well as a laptop. Tether the OI and RC (so that the motors will un-disable), then connect the laptop to the Programming port of the RC to the laptop.

I then wrote some code to drive the robot based off of commands received over the serial port, and wrote a program to convert readings from a joystick plugged into the laptop into commands to send on the serial port. The jump to controlling over wifi can then be done by utilizing any serial port sharing software (this functionality is built into many remote-control software packages, such as Windows RDC), or you can write your own program to relay the joystick values over the network. You could also probably use the part you referenced.

The only functionality you don't get from this is the feedback LEDs and Dashboard port on the OI, but these features can be easily emulated by sending data the opposite direction.

--Ryan