Arduino and Android control speed and direction of RC Surfer

Accelerometer sensor controls throttle and rudder

My RC surfer project (see last Blog entry) evolves into much more work than thought and the last addition is the control of the dc motor speed and the rudder with the Android phone.

Using the accelerometer sensor x- and y-axis values which are sent via bluetooth to the Arduino board I can in-/ decrease the speed of the motor by turning the phone up and down. To control the rudder I have to flip the phone to the left or to the right.

The reaction time with the first code on Android/ Arduino was kind of slow. I had to optimize the code and now it reacts almost in real time. Only the voltage value which is displayed on the phone is jumping when there is (too) much load on the system. I might have to add some isolation to the Arduino power supply to avoid too much noise when the motors draws much current.

The next thing I will do is to design a PCB which fits into the free space of the RC surfer in the forward compartment. So it's EAGLE time!