This is a quick project I’ve been working on to test the feasibility of using wifi to directly control something.
It uses a slider on an android app to control the position of a servo in real time using my widget and the Sparkfun WiFly Module.
There are three parts, the hardware, which is the widget and the Wifly module, the microcode that goes into the widget and the app code on the tablet.
(This is a rather lengthy post so I’ve moved this to a page of it’s own)
You can find it here- Simple Wifi Servo control with Android
As far as conclusions from this, I don’t particularly care for 802.11 for control. In my case, the primary objection is well, it’s not really meant for that sort of thing and I don’t like all the complicated message transactions this entails. Your mileage may vary on that. The other thing is my cheap tablet doesn’t have a very good wifi range so at 30 ft or so I start to loose control. Granted, much of this could probably be resolved with an improved algorithm on the app side, or perhaps a better device (I’ve resisted getting a smart phone). But for me, I prefer the Xbee series mentioned elsewhere on this blog so I will be sticking with that project before I come back and put any more effort in this one.