Droid RICE : Lightsaber control with your Smarphone
So, as a follow up to my Sidious hilt presented THERE, here's something I've been wanting to present for many months without having the time to finish a hilt for demonstrating the feature : a wireless version of RICE.
It's not rocket science, and I've played with it for several YEARS now (my old Omni Sabers wireless sound system used bluetooth too, though in a very special, low latency way). I've spent some time testing many bluetooth module and tweaking the current RICE apps which seemed to have issues to poll COM ports on PC (windows) when they are virtual BT ports.
Now it's fixed and I've found what is the simplest module to use : the BT modules known as HC (05 and 06). There are plenty of those everywhere.
The HC-06 is the simplest to use as it's a standard slave port which behaves like a wireless serial port. So in lieu of your wired RICE port, you just replace the serial RX, TX, GND connection to this module along with 3.3V to power it.
If you can't solder those tiny pads, they also exists as (bulkier) pre assembled modules, usually designed for arduino and DIY electronics. Slightly more expensive too
I won't provide any support for this as there are ZILLIONS of BT modules. They all have a configuration mode, accessed sometimes by changing the state of an I/O pin.
The HC-06 is simply listening all the time to configuration commands. Just hook it up to a USB serial port (hint hint : your RICE cable !) and send a few commands with a serial terminal app like DOCKLIGHT and the module is configured and ready to be paired.
2-3 mandatory things to configure on a module you want to install :
- set the baud rate to 115200
- set the BT name cause they all ship with the same name within a model / brand
- eventually change the pairing code (defaults is usually 1234 sometimes 0000)
You can then use your phone to check if you can at least pair the BT module. ♦VIDEO
[Appologies in the video below, you'll hear my phone trying to find the network, being in the basement. Couldn't heard this, but the mike caught it. Sounds amateur, sorry about this]
The current version of RICE have been recompiled to have the BT ports accepted. I've also written an Android App that will go on the market place once it's fully safe and tested, but in the meanwhile, it you want to try it, it is available in the Download section.
