Bluetooth remote control project

JPU

Senior Member
Hi All

I am trying to source a bluetooth remote control for integration into an ongoing project. Currently I use a 14m2 to control a brushless motor controller board. The 14m2 receives input from 3 wired switches which are stop/stop, speed up and slow down.

Id like to make the unit remote control and integrate a bluetooth system (so I can have future additions to the controller). So at this stage Id like to source a simple remote which has enough buttons to replicate the current control panel. Obviously this remote would have to be paired to a receiver which would pass on the instructions to the 14m2.

Can anyone point me to a suitable "off the shelf" solution or suggest an easy work around. I have limited knowledge of bluetooth (and electronics) so a simple solution would be great!

Thanks for you help

JPU
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
I'm not aware of ANY Bluetooth "remote controls". There are however many RF remotes that work on the common 144Mhz frequency for which there are many cheap receivers that can be used with PICAXE. Rev-Ed sell many that would be OK.
If you really want it to be Bluetooth, you may need to consider writing an app for a mobile phone! That would give you the ultimate flexibility.
For the receiver you could use the HC-05 / HC-06 modules available from many sources at very reasonable prices.

One of the issues you will be up against using anything off-the-shelf is that they run much faster than most PICAXE applications because they use compiled PIC code or even hardware based encoding. This can be a problem when trying to decode the signals using a PICAXE. One such example would be the LightWaveRF remotes used for home automation. Several people have made them work here. They had to use 20X chip clocked as fast as possible. A 14M would not be able to keep up. Might be worth a search of the forum.
One success I had was to use an old RF home alarm system. The keyfob used a custom hardware encoder that was pin-for-pin compatible with the much slower 600 series encoders. It was possible to decode the data in code but it could also have been done with a dedicated decoder chip. The keyfob only had two buttons though which might not suit your application.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Bluetooth is a bit complicated to use. Remotes, keyboards, mice all use their own internal Bluetooth protocols within the Bluetooth overall spec. A packet comes out of those, is received by the paired device, but it isn't in any format which can simply be passed to a PICAXE and there's often no means to do that.

You need to use something like the HC-06 products which can pass packets to a PICAXE, but that dictates them receiving packets they can understand, and off the shelf Bluetooth remotes, keyboards, mice aren't designed to do that.

You can use two HC-06 devices as a wireless Bluetooth bridge and pass data from one to the other but, while the PICAXE can now get data from the receiving HC-06 device, there's nothing to put such data into the sending HC-06 side.

The best one can usually do is create phone apps which can use their Bluetooth transmitters to send packets HC-06 devices can receive. Generic Bluetooth terminal apps for phones allow sending ASCII data, control apps can present buttons which can then be clicked to send specific strings but you need to code those in a language used to create phone apps.

Otherwise it seems to be PICAXE -> HC-06 -> air gap -> HC-06 -> PICAXE.

And of course there's the need to have code which allows the two sides to configure and pair with each other.

I also have limited experience of Bluetooth used this way so I might be wrong about some things but that's how I understand it. There doesn't seem to be any simple means to take a Bluetooth remote and have the PICAXE see button presses.
 

stevesmythe

Senior Member
Following on from Hippy's post, the best Bluetooth mobile phone app I have found is RoboRemo. This allows you to create "buttons" and "sliders" on the Android device's screen and configure them to send a text string of your choosing to the HC-06 (or other) bluetooth receiver. It is then easy to process the incoming text strings using the Picaxe to which the HC-06 is connected.
 

BeanieBots

Moderator
Just a slight correction to Hippy's post.
Two HC-06 devices cannot communicate directly with each other because the HC-06 is a slave only device. You also need a master device to setup a pair.
The HC-05 can be configured as either slave or master so to you could use two HC-05 devices or an HC-05 as the master and an HC-06 as the slave.
The links provided by PieM look like your best bet as a way forward if Bluetooth is the route you want to take.
 

PhilHornby

Senior Member
If you go down the HC-05 route, you'll have to wait 2 ~ 5 seconds for it to establish the 'link' after power is applied. Only then can you send your Remote Control commands ... which is probably not ideal for this project (assuming a 'normal' hand-held, battery powered Remote).

433MHz RF gets my vote.
 
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