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Hardware > GBA Video Receiver/Robot controller

#61278 - natern - Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:04 pm

Hey there, I was thinking of a final year project for university and was wanting to make an interface from a gameboy advance sp to a robot. My goal is to be able to control the robot using the buttons on the gameboy (basically using the gameboy as the controller) which would be plenty of buttons for just about any robot that doesn't fly or swim. I also was wanting to be able to receive a video feed FROM the robot to know where it is. (Ideally this whole thing would be wireless so the robot wouldn't been in visable range of the user but at this point I'd be more than happy with a wired interface)
My first question is whether or not the comm port on the gameboy could support enough bandwidth for a small camera. I've read the comm port specs at http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#communicationports and it thought it might be possible to receive a video feed using the high speed 2Mbit/s transfer rate, but I don't know what kind of overhead to expect, or what to expect from a camera. (I am assuming that is 2Mbit/s total, or 1Mbit/s each direction) As an alternative, I could try and build my own flashcart, possibly based on the retail A/V adpater found here: http://www.merconnet.com/product_info.php?products_id=458 . But I have never attempted to make a flash cart, so I'm not sure how hard it would be to make one capable of receiving video (audio would not be necessary) as well as send information to a robot specifying which button was pushed. If a flashcart would be the better way to go, I think I would like to be able to send data from the flash cart as well to avoid the need for making this interface require two peices (flash cart and comm port adapter). Thanks for your input!
Nathan

#61307 - thegamefreak0134 - Fri Nov 18, 2005 9:50 pm

I'm pretty sure the GBA's link port can more than handle the data your talking about here, the problem is that the CPU time to proces the data, put it onscreen, and get input from buttons and such would take away from that data reciaving/sending time. What you could do is (if possible) have the robot send the information in the exact specifications of the GBA screen and then use say mode 4 or 5 the display that information onscreen as soon as it is recieved. (I say 5 because it's faster and would require less data transfer.) As for the wireless thing, I know they make two kinds of wireless links for the GBA, one that acts like a regular old link and one that the game has to be tailored to. I also know that both of them have pretty short range, (like 10 - 15 feet) and unless you could somehow boost the signal on the other side it wouldn't work.
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#61389 - natern - Sat Nov 19, 2005 6:37 pm

Where would I find the specifications that the video feed would have to be in so that it could be directly displayed on screen and how hard do you think it would be to design an encoder to take a feed from the camera and process it into a format easily displayed by the gameboy? Thanks!
By the way, no one happens to know where I could find a good camera for this purpose and how much bandwidth it requires, do they?
Thanks again.