Trying to set up the BoeBot with EB500 (BlueTooth) in the VPL environment.
This may be a long shot, but let me tell you about what we're doing and where we want to go next.
First, I am working with a High School teacher and his new class as an engineering mentor. He is designing the class to teach robotics, programming, and all the inter-related skills needed to do that (mechanics, motors, servos, radio control, interfacing, computers, etc.). So far, we've successfully taken the students through building the BoeBots, programming them using PBASIC, setting up MSRS, running the C# program to interface the Simple Dashboard to the BoeBots with the EB500 BlueTooth connection and have successfully controlled the BoeBot with the Simple Dashboard. Some students went further to exercise their talents by building a wheel chair interface with servos and successfully impressed the principal, showing him an empty wheel chair navigating the halls of the school by radio control.
Next, we are trying out VPL to see how we can create the same results. Hopefully, it will be a more simplified approach than working with C#. We've done the simple VPL tutorials, and we see the elements for the Simple Dashboard and the BoeBot elements, but how do you create the connections (with all their options) to get a quick Simple Dashboard controlling the BoeBot?
We've tried just a one line connection from the Simple Dashboard to the BoeBot motor and the MSRS PBASIC program on the BoeBot responds with two beeps indicating that it is now connected through the BlueTooth to the computer running VPL. The Simple Dashboard starts up, we try to connect to localhost on port 50001, but nothing shows up to control.
Any ideas where to go next? Is there a simple "hookup" diagram for this? Is there a more complete explanation or white paper on this subject? Eventually, this could expand to working with the BoeBot sensors, but just getting it to work in this "simple" configuration would be a big help.
Sincerely,
Wayne.
