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Cool, you can make yourself some Firefighting Wiimote Robot this weekend!

It has IR sensors which can detect a candle and a bluetooth transciever to communicate back to a host computer. I use a boebot as the robot platform, an arduino, wiimote and a Linux computer.

The wiimote uses its IR sensor to find the candle. It transmits the sensor readings back to the host computer over bluetooth ( see my earlier post for details). A C program running on the host computer reads the sensor data and sends commands back over bluetooth to the wiimote. The wiimote relays those commands to an arduino board over the wiimote’s expansion port. The expansion ports uses the I2C protocol. The arduino then controls the servos (the boebot uses servos modified for continuous rotation) and fan. The fan is controlled by a ULN8023 chip.

This fire fighting robot is still very crude. It lacks the number of sensors that you would be need to seriously compete. It is mainly a proof of concept that the wiimote can be used in a fire fighting robot. It basically just circles around until it sees a candle, then turns on the fan and moves toward the candle. The wiimote seems to loose the flame when it gets withing 4 inches. Maybe the candle is overloading the sensors or maybe its just bad programming on my part.

[via] windmeadow