Web controlled robot software?

Did you take a look at:

Might find good advise from them.

Hope it'll help!

jean

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Rich J. wrote:

if you are looking to set up a web server on your PC try Apache (probably still most widely used webserver on the web - and free)

versions apparently exist for windows

You will need a web server that supports cgi, apache being very good, to run applications on the server machine to operate the robot. Simple serial port and parallel port stuff can be done with notepad. The below link is an example of a simple setup where the parallel port is used to switch video feeds and change channels, and the serial port is used to control a servo controller to operate the pan/tilt cam.

If you want to write your robot software in VB then your webserver may have to be written in VB aswell.

Take a look over at

and goto the VB section, you are gonna want info on the Winsock control.

-D@n

Answering yours and the OP's message: I use Windows Apache for the server (free), and VB for the CGI. There are freebie CGI examples for VB that show how it's done. It's actually pretty simple. The example code can be found by doing a Google.com search of the phrase "cgi4vb" (no quotes needed).

My Web-based system (which I can't share because it's a private observation camera for a company) uses the also-free WINIO library to control parallel ports. I use two serial ports, which can be opened readily under VB in WinMe and earlier versions (and there are some free alternative wrappers for those who can't use the MSComm object). One is to command a serial servo controller, and the other a serial-based X10 interface.

-- Gordon Author: Constructing Robot Bases (Forthcoming) Robot Builder's Sourcebook, Robot Builder's Bonanza

DM wrote:

My old senior project was a robotic device controlled over the web (happened to be a camera as well). Socket programming is actually not very tough, and you can get a lot more interactivity than by using CGI and a webserver. As a stressed-out senior doing electrical, firmware, and software design for a USB device, I still managed to get it all working even though my experience with C++ and Java was pretty minimal at the time. I found this document to be quite useful:

Of course I still needed to use a webserver to handle the image transfer portion; I never did get the TWAIN capture completed. That's another level of complexity...

But still, once you get your connection made you just dump bytes in one end and out they come on the other. Just like a little miracle every time... ;-)