My latest weird idea. I like knobs for throttle control. The phone is a cheap android unit, it has only wifi, no service- it talks to my Xbee controller network via Bluetooth.
I like it, though is there a reason the phone has to be attached to the throttle unit itself? My thought would be to make it so the phone could be in your pocket or clip or something, so you’d only need to actually hold the throttle with the knob.
Later,
K
The phone is the wireless transmitter, isn’t it? So if it were in your pocket, there would have to be a wire from the throttle controls to the phone so the phone could send the information to the Xbee.
Is the phone connected to the throttle via a wire or plug in this example, or just sitting in the box communicating with it wirelessly?
A few thoughts on that… First, if the phone is in your pocket or on a belt clip, etc., a wire plugged into it in exchange for a smaller form factor in your hand might be an acceptable compromise. I’ve gotten to like small “hold easily in one hand” throttles over the years.
Second, when the throttle is active, is there any graphic information displayed on the phone itself that shows speed, direction, function, loco info, etc? That would pretty much necessitate you being able to see the phone during operations, so the side by side form makes sense, or maybe a top/bottom form factor could be built for easier handling by one hand. (My guess is it could be made similar in size to the NCE DCC controller.)
Later,
K
It’s just a prototype idea to play with to see if I like it, I’m not sure I do, although I do have everything talking. The phone snaps into the body and there is a ‘thumb hole’ access on the bottom to both get to the phone power button and to pop it out. The thumb grip makes it easy to hold in one hand too.
The phone is used primarily for the graphical interface. It communicates with the Xbee board via Bluetooth, so no, there is no cable. The Xbee board then communicates with the network to control a particular locomotive. The wifi in the phone could also be utilized, but that’s for later.
Since the Bluetooth is bi-directional, yes, you could draw any sort of graphics you wanted using data from the Xbee network or possibly, pull data from wifi via the phone. I was thinking Raspberry Pi as a web server for this. You could pull a locomotive roster from a server, then use that to pick which loco to control via xbee. Something like that maybe. The hooks are there for it at least.
But right now all I have is a simple app to show what locomotive number I’m controlling. I’m doing the app work on the phone with python, in particular this package- https://github.com/renpytom/python-for-android
At some point I will try to pull all this together and post up a GitHub repository.
But, the question is, is the throttle (part with he knob) plugged into the phone or not?
David Maynard said:
But, the question is, is the throttle (part with he knob) plugged into the phone or not?
Based on what Martin said I would say no.
The phone is used primarily for the graphical interface. It communicates with the Xbee board via Bluetooth, so no, there is no cable.
I think the throttle is based on Xbee.
The phone just sits in the cradle. No wires. It communicates with the Xbee node via Bluetooth. The Xbee network controls the locomotives. This is based on experiments from a while back with my android tablet- here are the innards from that…
Android tablet, talks to Bluetooth module to the right (w red led), then that talks to Xbee node (with big antenna) via ttl serial. Knob and Joystick to the far right just for fun. No keyboard on this one.