I have recently purchased a arduino and am have a great time tooling around with it.
I would like to make a rover that I can control from my laptop.
My question relates to the best way to communicate with the arduino remotely. I have been looking around, there seems to be a fair bit on the net with the xbees, not so much for the wisheild.
My current understanding is that with the I can use 1 wishield and the arduino, and control it through HTML forms.
To use the xbees, I need the xbee shield, and 2 xbees, one for the computer and the other for the arduino. The arduino is then controlled by serial communication.
Im pretty keen to get going, I would welcome advice as to the better way forward.
The XBee is a drop in UART solution, and requires less power than a WiFi part. I'd use XBee unless you were looking to have direct access to the rover from any computer without having to have a receiver Xbee station on a PC.
Wifi, you only need your existing access point to connect to it from any pc or mac, and you can control your device from a web based application from anywhere in the world without having to add additional hardware.
Power consumption is minimal, so is the stack, check out the Yellowjacket ultra miniature plug-n-play Arduino 328 with integrated WiFi module, here:-
I ended up going with the xbees. THe main factor was that after looking around, there seemed to be more sample code and examples available for the xbees. Im pretty new to this, so as much as I would have liked to try the wifi, there was just to much that I dont understand yet to be able to use it at this point.
For cost, simplicity, portability, and upward compatibility, I'd highly recommend WiFi.
But it is a relatively new breakthrough for the Arduino, and probably not recommended for Arduino newbies. There's a great deal of support over at the Asynclabs forums, but there's still a way to go before it gets as comprehensive as Arduino.cc.
WiFi connects to your computer using your existing access point or wireless broadband router, no other hardware is needed, so if you can connect a computer to your home WiFi network, you'd have no problems connecting an Arduino with WiFi.
I've got a Yellowjacket on the way and once it's arrived I'll be testing WiFi boosters to determine the effective distance. Off the shelf, it's good for 100 meters and that makes it perfect for a range of house-type applications, robotics, home automation and residential or SME security systems.
I have to make a wireless project in a few months, and i was asking myself, how many wifi shields can i connect to the same computer?
could i connect more than 100 or 200?
