Hi I'm hoping someone can provide some guidance on the best approach for using two Arduinos with Xbee modules to create a radio control system (to control a robot from a custom controller).
I have built a robot (6 dof) in which all of the motors are controlled via pwm (using RC speed controllers) and attached to an Arduino Mega.
I've also built a controller which currently has just 6 analog controls using pots which are all attached to an Arduino Uno.
Each Arduino has an Xbee fitted via an Xbee shield. I believe I have configured the Xbees correctly.
I have had some success so far by sending the 6 pieces of data (each a 3 digit integer) delimited by commas using multiple serial.print commands. I put a delay in the TX so that it sends about 50 times per second. I then read this on the other Arduino using the Serial.parseInt command to parse the data into integer variables.
I've had some issues with the data becoming out of sync (as if one of the pieces of data didn't make it to the receiving end). This mostly happens at startup time, and I have written code to deal with it, but I'm still not confident I have a reliable link, and that I'm using the best methods, eg. should I be creating a single string and transmitting that rather than a serial.print for each piece of data? Is there a better way to read the data than serial.parseInt?
So, being very new to Arduino, I'd really appreciate some broad guidelines on what might be the best methods. I have researched serial comms but the fine details of how it operates is still a mystery to me.
Just want to make sure I'm on the right track from the start.
Thanks in advance