Rio Board Communication

[Ariadni]

Hello I am currently working on a project and I want to ask your opinion about what is the best way to establish communication between the NI RIO board and my laptop. I want your opinion as it concern WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee and MiWi. My target is to use a camera on the robot capture an image and wireless preview it on my laptop. I would like also to examine the option of live streaming for wireless control.

Your opinions will be very helpful

Thanks in advance

Kritonas

[Philbot]

My opinion would be to use WiFi if you are working indoors or you are near a WiFi access point..

You can add a small low cost bridge/access point to the robot and you will have several options.

Bluetooth has a limited range, and MiWi has the added expense of needing a cellular phone account.

Option a) If you are working in a building with WiFi, configure the robot as a wirless bridge and then the robot can connect to the existing WiFi Access point.

Option b) If you want to add additional network devices to the robot (like a camera), put a WiFi access point on the robot, and have your laptop connect directly to the robot.

          Most access points will give you 4 connections, so you can use one for control, one for an IP camera and you have two spare.

[Ariadni]

Thanks for your reply.

Some more questions please:

-About option (b), when you say "have your laptop connect directly to the robot" you mean through WiFi right?

-If i buy a router connect it to the rio board and then connect it to my laptop i will be able to have WiFi communication?

-If the above is correct what issues i may have?

-Finally, i will be able using labview to control the robot if i place a WiFi router on the robot right?

Thanks in advance

[Philbot]

-About option (b), when you say "have your laptop connect directly to the robot" you mean through WiFi right?

Yes.  The laptop pwould connect to the router on the robot using WiFi and thus it would be able to talk directly to the cRIO

-If i buy a router connect it to the rio board and then connect it to my laptop i will be able to have WiFi communication?

Yes.

-If the above is correct what issues i may have?

Well, you need to understand network setup and wireless, and you may need to disconnect your laptop from other (wired) networks, but it's pretty doable.

Direct connect, and connect via WiFi wireless are very simmilar.

-Finally, i will be able using labview to control the robot if i place a WiFi router on the robot right?

The Router will simply replace a direct hard wired connection, but it won't magically give you remote control.

You will be able to create real-time labview programs on the laptop, and run or deploy them to the cRIO.

If you want to deploy a remote control program, you will need to create two programs, one for the robot and one for the controling laptop.

Then these two programs will need to communicate with each other using tcp-ip networking messages.

For some examples, search this site for "dani wifi".  DaNI is NI's starter robotics kit that uses the SBRIO. 

There are white papers that show controlling it via WiFi.

Phil.

[Ariadni]

can you please suggest to me a frequently used router for such connection?

Thanks