About Reiji
Reiji is a robot that can control camera's orientation by smartphone with Android OS via BlueTooth. Camera is handled by 3 DYNAMIXEL servomechanism, what allows manipulate its orientation around three axes and reach every orientation.
Technical Informations
Motors
Three DYNAMIXEL AX-12+ servomechanisms are used to manipulate camera's orientation. Each motor controls angular position around one axis: x, y and z. Used servomechanisms are special ones. They are kind of inteligent motors. Controlling those devices is done through RS485 interface with use of simple protocol. Each device has its own processor, which controls the motor. User can set couple of parameters like angular position, angular velocity, LED diode which inform about errors specified by user, angles limits, temperature limits, torque limits and so on...
Android app
Robot can be controlled in two modes:
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Changing smartphone's orientation - application uses orientation sensors (accelerometer and magnetometer) to calculate device's orientation around all three axes (pitch, roll and yaw). It can be done by reading those values from virtual sensors (rotation vector sensor or deprecated orientation sensor), or by calculating it manually. In the controlled it is done in both ways and can be esaily switched.
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Changing position with seek bars - angular position of each servo can be set independently. Value is sent every time when position is changed. It is also possible to build raw DYNAMIXEL's frame and control every register in the device. In this case, knowledge of protocol and registers description is needed.