From the Nuremberg Toy Fair, a New Linux System For RC Cars 81
An anonymous reader writes "Last weekend, during the Nuremberg Toy Fair 2012, I spotted a really cool new system for 'professional' RC models based on Embedded Linux. The WiRC allows you to control an RC car (or any other RC vehicle) with an iOS/Android device using WiFi. The core of this system is a 240 MHz ARM9 processor, with 16 MB SDRAM and 4 MB FLASH (with 2 USB ports and 802.11b/g WiFi, a microphone input and a Speaker output). It features 8+4 channels of output. A free software SDK is now in development to code your own transmitter applications."
This of you who refuse to read French (Score:5, Informative)
might appreciate the vendor's site in English [dension.com].
iOS/Andorid+WIFI control != professional (Score:5, Informative)
In order to control any RC device like a car or some multi-copter even remotely professionally you need precise controllers, reliable connectivity and low latency, all of which any iOS/Android touch devices seriously lack, by design.
Even intermediate hobbyist senders (actually bidirectional these days for telemetry, FPV etc.) have precise and adjustable mechanical contol sticks, come with specialized circuits to bypass the controller's CPU where low latency is of importance and use frequency hopping RC for more reliability and to allow hundreds of pilots in a close range.
Re:This of you who refuse to read French (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This of you who refuse to read French (Score:4, Informative)
Word. Their ideas [hobbymedia.it] are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to their newsletter [hobbymedia.it].
Re:professional? well no (Score:4, Informative)
I fly RC Helicopters and I would not trust something like this, period. We take signal quality very, very seriously. Any loss of signal and you are basically doomed the way we fly these days (low to the ground and stickbanging). Even the major manufacturers have signal problems, altough it's very good. Have never had any signal hickup with my Futaba 2.4 gear, but they have done everything in there power to make the signal as optimized for the application as possible. For a slow moving vehicle, sure. But anything flying, no thanks. Latency is another matter. 20ms stick to servo is considered good. The touchscreen alone is probably 100ms, Consider a car at 60mph, it will move several feets before even starting to turn at those latencys.
Cool, possibly. But more of a toy thing.
Re:professional? well no (Score:4, Informative)
Hi, The parrot seems to be something you actually do control with a phone. It's most proably self-stabilizing and very easy to fly altough most certanly very innacurate. http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/ [parrot.com]
It is a "toy", I normaly don't recommed them as it's worlds apart what I fly, but you could probably get some enjoyment out of it. Don't set your expectation bar too high though...
If you are truly interessted you can buy quad-chassis, motors, speed controlers, flight computer (with gyros and other sensors), and there is open source software for it too. These are the real thing, but since I just fly regular copters I don't know much about them I'm afraid. http://aeroquad.com/ [aeroquad.com] (Don't know if this is the best, but a place to start reading, if interessted)