Wifi control of Pico

1

ANyone tried to use a raspberry pi gamepad (which is wifi) to control some motors attached to a robotics board for pico ?

Answers on a postcard…

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2

Hi Peter,

Do you have a link to the gamepad?

3

Here we are Liam - Raspberry Pi Compatible Wireless Gamepad / Controller | The Pi Hut

Cheers,

Peter

4

I don’t think these are WiFi, it’s just a RF signal at 2.4 GHz that communicates via the USB dongle. I have something similar.

5

So what’s the difference between 2.4GHz wifi and 2.4GHz RF ?

They are both 2.4GHz which ever way you look at it. At the end of the day Wifi = RF i.e. radio.

6

Hi Peter

Probably protocols or the way the communication is handled. For instance Microwave ovens are 2.4GHz too and they don’t bear much resemblance to WiFi except to provide a source of interference. I also have a reversing camera in my car which transmits the video via a 2.4GHz wireless system so that would be an example of 'Point to Point" communication. I believe Bluetooth is 2.4GHz also. Loosely labeled “10cm” Radar as used on ships is another example in this frequency range. Lots of different “protocols” or uses and it is all “RF”.
Cheers Bob

7

Interesting, thanks Robert.
Thinking about this, and remembering what I did when I used the RPi gamepad with the RPi Zero 2 W. I had to add the dongle via the mini usb socket on the RPi Zero, and then it was a case of writing a pthyon program to use the “evdev” functions. Unfortunately there’s no additional mini usb on the Pico, and the installing of evdev is not possible. Shame really, as the Pico Robotics Board is just right for motors on a robot vehicle. Perhaps the Pico designers will add a mini usb to the other end of the Pico in the future…

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Hi Peter,

This won’t help with your existing controller but it seems some people have got Bluetooth controllers working to control a Pico W controlled robot, perhaps that’s a possible option in the future worth exploring.

9

Thanks Trent, that’s good to know :+1:
Controlling motors with bluetooth on the RPi family is pretty easy, so not surprised Pico works fine with it as well. Will try to see how “Tom” has programmed his Pico.