Plane | Adding an LCD to the controller, and using Visual Basic for feedback

So here’s a video:

So pretty easy but important step here. For a while I’ve known that I need to have some more feedback from the robot that just LED brightness levels on the controller. This VB program allows me to get analog values from the vehicle and interpret them in any number of ways. You can download and run that program HERE, and like I said in the video I’ve refrained from going open source with my VB programs in the past because they’ve never really had any polish to them. But now I think it will be good to keep this all open.

I also added a 16 * 2 character LCD to my controller. I’ve sacrificed the 6 pins because hopefully in the long run it will be a better experience for the user. I may go back, but for now I’d rather build around something that’s a little more constraining as it will force me to innovate a little bit more. Here’s a picture of the new controller:

Here’s the program:

I didn’t mention in in the video, but I moved the mux from the controller, to the vehicle. It allows me to have 22 analog inputs, and the reason I took so long to finally add it was primarily laziness on my part. Aside from the the code is still very similar but close followers will notice that I cleaned up the way the program receives and sends code. It is much much more organized, and much more expandable. Here’s the “new” controller:

Here’s the new program:

Like I promised in the video, here are a few more properly focused pictures:

Hey! This post was written a long time ago, but I'm leaving it up on the off-chance it may help someone. Proceed with caution. It may not be a good idea to blindly integrate this code or work into your project, but instead use it as a starting point.

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