As a remote controller for the Sumo robot (see “Zumo Robot with Magnetic Encoders“) we have used so far a combination of NXP FRDM-KL25Z board and a Joystick Shield (see “Joystick Shield with nRF24L01 driving a Zumo Robot“). That solution was not ideal, so this weekend I created a 3D printed prototype:
tinyK20 Remote Controller
The concept is using the following parts:
- tinyK20 Board (NXP Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4 running at 48 MHz)
- 190 mA LiPo Charger from Adafruit (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1904)
- 3.3V step-up/step-down converter (https://www.pololu.com/product/2122)
- 1.6″ Nokia 84×48 pixel LCD (“Snake Game on the FRDM-KL25Z with Nokia 5110 Display“) (dx.com)
- 5 push buttons (up, down, left, right, center)
- On/Off Power switch
- ARM SWD debug port
- USB port for bootloader, shell and USB CDC connection
For the push buttons I’m using the microcontroller internal pull-ups. The LCD uses a connector to the front board:
Push Buttons
To LiPo battery gets charged from the 5V tinyK20 USB port. A 3.3V step-up/step-down converter supplies the 3.3V to the tinyK20 board from VBat:
tinyK20 Power Supply
All the components fit into the 3D printed enclosure:
tinyK20 Remote Controller Inside
The external debug circuit (to use the tinyK20 as debugger) is removed to shrink the box size:
Debugging tinyK20 with tinyK20
Below is a rendering of the 3D model for the enclosure:
tinyK20 Remote Controller 3D Model
Summary
With this project I have handy remote controller unit with nRF24L01+ wireless transceiver, battery charger and 5 push buttons to navigate trough menus or play games like Tetris or Snake.
Snake Game
The Eclipse/Kinetis Design Studio project is available on GitHub. The 3D model is posted on Thingiverse. The next step would be to integrate everything into a PCB. Then every student group could use such a tinyK20 board with their robots. Or to use it as a gaming platform. Or as a remote controller to open the garage door :-).
Happy Remoting 🙂
MCU on Eclipse 
Looking good Erich, I was working on something very similar for the Blaze Kickstarter however I ran out of time and wasn’t able to complete it.
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Hi Kevin,
I’m looking forward how I could port that to the Blaze 🙂
Erich
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Well, I’m getting there with the API and IDE – its taking a little longer than I’d hoped but its getting there. With the IoT board, you could have multi-player capabilities!! How cool would that be?
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With the nRF24L01+ I already have multiplayer capabilites: It can build up mesh networks or connect to the cloud through a gateway.
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Is the TinyK20 available for purchase?
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It is available to the students as part of their course work. But we have a few which could be made available outside of the university. Send me an email to the address noted in the about box of this blog if you are interested.
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Hi Erich,
Here is a really handy mini joystick I have used for a few projects, 4 way plus push.
Click to access E-2014knitterELKAT-low_200.pdf
Cheers
Jim
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Hi Jim,
I used what I had right now available. Indeed, that would be a better option :-).
thanks for that link!
Erich
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