Hello everyone out there!
Some weeks ago I wrote in my first little article about the fun that some of my friends and me had together while running a broadcast from the airfield and maybe you can still remember that I mentioned how great it would be to give to the virtual guests the possibility to control something via the internet on the hosts side, too.
Well, I am really very happy to let you know that my friend Wayne from the UK and me concluded just yesterday a little open source project that made this wish come true!
We know of course that there exist a lot of great working projects like this already on the internet, but our goal was mainly to find something that is simple to use and that could be combined with our existing hardware to hold the costs as low as possible.
After some research we decided to base our project on a Aduino Leonardo because it can be ordered for less then 20$ in near to every country and works with every computer that has a USB interface.
The following video will show to you how the system works in practice, interesting is also to mention that the distance between Wayne and me is just about 2000 Kilometers / 1240 Miles.
I know, my spoken english is even worst then the written one but I hope that I could made myself clear...
How does it work?
Basically it is very easy. The client or guest just need a gamepad and the clientsoftware. This software is sending the incoming commands over the internet (using the UDP protocol) to the receiving computer (Server) who sends it to the arduino. The arduino converts the recived commands into a PPM signal and can be connected to the trainer port of the most remotes (or directly to a TX Module as shown in the video).
To send back the video signal we just used Skype during our test out of convenience, but we even think already about a software release that could include the transmission of the video signal, too.
As you can imagine we are just at the beginning and there is still much to do, but our successful test showed that it can work out - and that even with a really low latency on a very long distance.
If you are interested to work with us on this open source project or to download the actual software version (of course it will be always 100% for free!) then please follow Wayne aka CurryKitten on his Sourceforge website.
He is preparing right now the material and will publish everything that you need during the next few days. Well, if you want to then you can order already your Aduino Leonardo in the meanwhile... ;)
Of course we are also happy about any feedback in comment section, ideas, suggestions and critic are always welcome as long as they are constructive. Thx a lot for the time that you invested to read this article.
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