Ideas for a wireless connection for serial between controller & PC w Roborun?

Roborun+ is an extremely useful too for testing complex scripts, but the need for a wired serial or USB connection makes it difficult to test mobile devices under real-world loads. It would be very handy to have a way to make a WiFi connection between the controller's USB (or preferably, for those of us using CAN, serial) port and a PC. Does anyone have an idea of how to do this?

Ciao,
Lenny

I was looking at USB wifi-dongles from Banggood.com this week and had the same wish. For under10 us$ you have a nice one. Even better would be one which can use 4G with it's own simcard.

Those dongles can do sound over USB and others can do more.

Roboteq should have something like that, i 'm busy getting an arduino controlling the roboteq by wifi but i wished i didn't need the arduino.

Also i 'm not happy that i need a converter to let the arduino communicate with the roboteq, this should be built in the controller already.

I'm not bothered that the Roboteq has classic RS232 serial rather than the low level serial of the Arduino. There are so many different serial protocols out there that we really can't expect a motor controller to have more than the 3 already built into the Roboteq - USB, RS232 and CAN.

My issue is that i 'm building a robot and i don't like to have loads of open prints in the casing. A wifi-dongle which i could just stick in the usb of the roboteq would be great for me.

Also the open prints have to be connected with shielded wires which makes it all messy and prone to EMI.

Also i guess many more hobby-customers would like to have their roboteq controlled by wifi...makes life a lot easyier.

With that I agree. WiFi would be very handy, not in my case for control (I use a CANbus network) but for remote diagnosis. I just don't think it worthwhile for Roboteq to build in (noise-prone) TTF support.

Here is the low-cost solution, assuming you're OK writing a little bit of software:

You can use a Raspberry Pi Zero W (at $10) as a WiFi dongle on the robot side. You'd have to write some simple software to read/write the USB serial port based on some incoming connection on the WiFi.

You'd have to do something else on the PC side to make it look like a serial port, though. Perhaps a USB board like a Teensy, hooked to a UART/WiFi board like an ESP8266. The Teensy can look like a USB serial port; you'd write a simple program to read the serial data sent by the computer, and write it out the ESP8266 over WiFi, which the Raspberry Pi Zero W could pick up.

If you don't want to write your own software, you need a pre-made wireless serial module; unfortunately, those typically are pretty slow. The Xbee with the USB Xbee Explorer comes to mind. The good news is that they are plug-and-play, but they have high latency, especially when doing bidirectional communication.

Thanks for the suggestions.

For me this will be the solution for a while untill i order the Udoo x86...

www.banggood.com/Wemos-Mega-+WiFi-R3-ATm...WRm9cCFdKIaAodXz8NzA

Hi...i am a new user here. It looks like you have to do something else on the PC side to make it look like a serial port, though. Perhaps a USB board like a Teensy, hooked to a UART/WiFi board like an ESP8266. The Teensy can look like a USB serial port; you'd write a simple program to read the serial data sent by the computer, and write it out the ESP8266 over WiFi.

turnkey pcb assembly

Not sure if you found a way to work out your problem, but I'd start by skipping USB, they are pretty unreliable on the controllers I've used. It even says in the manual somewhere not to use usb for control because it sucks. paraphrasing of course...