RC car controlled with the N95 acceleration sensor

Amazing! Andreas Jakl posted a cool N95 hack that uses the built-in accelerometer, Python, Bluetooth, and a microcontroller to control the movement of a remote control car:

Now we wanted to take the acceleration sensor of a mobile phone to the next level and use it to control something literally "bigger" than an application that is running on the phone itself.

The result is called "ShakerRacer" (thanks to Adam Montandon for this great name!). Stephan Selinger, one of our professors, bought a normal RC car for about €90 and "tuned" it. Not in the traditional way, but instead he replaced the standard remote control component with an own microcontroller and a Bluetooth-module.

Using the Python module aXYZ from cyke64, it was possible to write a small application that translates the movements of the N95 acceleration sensor to commands that can be understood by the car. This enables you to go as fast as 30 km/h by just tilting your phone!

ShakerRacer: Real RC car controlled with the N95 acceleration sensor - [via] Link


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Posted by: bjepson on November 28, 2007 at 4:00 PM

I couldn't find the source code to this project, so I hacked something together and posted it here: http://cachefly.oreilly.com/make/hacks/src/xyz2bluetooth.py You'll need to be running Python for S60 on your N95: http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/Python_for_S60

I tested it with a Bluetooth module from SparkFun (see the source code for details), but you could use it to send serial data over Bluetooth to some other device as well.


Posted by: jason_striegel on November 28, 2007 at 8:49 PM

sweet work brian! you weren't kidding when you said the n95 was nice and hackable.


Posted by: Anonymous on December 4, 2007 at 10:56 AM

C'est vraiment génial


Posted by: Chris on December 11, 2007 at 7:21 AM

Reminds me of Floor-It
http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/toy-cars


Posted by: goodan on December 16, 2007 at 1:19 AM

I have adopted bjepson's python code to control a LEGO NXT robot car. It is simple to do and works very well.
Here is the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sl1Q6S3yuo

Cheers.


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