Any electrical engineers here? Help with project ideas

[rick540]

Ok so now I'm in it up to the knees, working for a living 14 hours a day AND I have to complete my Electrical Engineering design projects III by 20 May..... and to make it really stupid I am also a thesis supervisor for 30 other totally un related students in a different field at work. (Talk about a dose of my own medicine... sheesh)

Well the project. I have been told to make a remote controlled socker ball. errr yeah..ok

The actual ball I have many ideas for but I'm a bit stuck on finding RF encoder/decoder chips that will suit my purpose for the remote. never mind the FM tranmitter/receiver circuitry.

I need something that can transmit serial adress and data blocks and I'll just create an encoding/decoding control scheme with PIC 12F's, or I can take an easy route and use a 8 or 12 channel LSI chip pair.

Been searching data sheets and RC car forums all evening and cannot find anything that would work for this RC yet.

I need to move two or three things in an XYZ axis in both directions as well as PWM control.

Any ideas?

 

[Sankekur]

I have not had a lot of experience with RF type things, but a couple of guys I know have used Xigbee (or whatever it is called) for remote control purposes in PIC (and DSPIC) applications, and it seemed a pretty easy interface to get going and with pretty decent range.

 

[rick540]

IEEE® 802.15.4 Zigbee modules....

Thanks, that could work, checking it out now.

 

[Sankekur]

Cool, I hope you get sorted

 

[P1000]

Yeah, Zigbee will be the safest bet for this situation.

 

[328ii]

What max. range does the ball have to controlled from..? Budget, Power...

Maybe for a easy link solution buy a cheap rc toy for switching axis motors/pendulums.

Also try this supplier for rf modules - www.rfdesign.co.za

8?>

 

[Hellas]

RC car mounted inside the ball. Sorted.

 

[rick540]

What max. range does the ball have to controlled from..? Budget, Power...

Maybe for a easy link solution buy a cheap rc toy for switching axis motors/pendulums.

Also try this supplier for rf modules - www.rfdesign.co.za

8?>

That zigbee stuff is so cool! possibilities are endless, thanks found the rfdesign website.

Budget not really a problem, distance 100 metres approx.

I really need to try not get ahead of myself here due to time constraints, although I'd love the ball to do impressive stuff like burnouts (Big power) Bounce etc but better stick to boring forward reverse and use a pendulum weight inside for left right and keep it simple.

The final product will probably weigh a few kilos so was thinking of using a 12V car blower motor or wiper motor and get my hands on a small metal lathe to sort the parts.

Now what do I use for a ball (Needs to be transparent and I'll paint the socer ball on it with transparent dye)

@ Hellas.... I wish I could get away with that it's the easiest by far.