Phase B of a hand held transmitter takes shape. This is a rough approximation but I think it will serve as a master for an RTV mold to cast a resin model from. It still needs a bit of design work but this is the basic idea. Xbee transmitter, 1634 Attiny, Parallax Joystick and a Pololu USB/serial interface plugged into the tablets’ USB port. I had considered Bluetooth but it’s the first thing to get dropped on cheap tablets, whereas everyone has USB.
Originally, I had something similar that I had put standard R/C radio guts into, however there was no actual interface to the tablet except via wifi. This design, although in the early stages, will interface with the tablet for a user interface, plus transmit directly on the Xbee Network. The tablet will also do standard WiFi so I can interface to the server as well. With an additional Xbee node on the server, (which will be a Raspberry Pi), all sorts of control possibilities emerge, just requiring s/w. I’ve downloaded the Eclipse SDK for Android as well, I have limited app development experience, at least in the native Java, but it seems like an interesting challenge. I have done some Python development on Android and may end up doing that here too, not sure quite yet. What I would like is to run Chrome on this tablet as they have a serial port API. However, despite this being an Android tablet, I can’t get Chrome to install. Go figure.