Bluetooth to RAMBo

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jlmccuan
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Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by jlmccuan »

Is there a way to add Bluetooth to a RAMBo without using a RaspberryPi?
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teoman
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Re: Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by teoman »

You can probably get a bt to serial chip and wire it directly to the rambo serial pins. No reason why it should not work.
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Tonkabot
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Re: Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by Tonkabot »

teoman wrote:You can probably get a bt to serial chip and wire it directly to the rambo serial pins. No reason why it should not work.
BT is a pain to develop stuff for, at times. If there is a BT to serial board available, you still need drivers on the other end that know how to open and deal with that connection. Or another BT to serial on the other end, too.

I am thinking that while possible, you would spend a lot of time getting it to work reliably
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teoman
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Re: Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by teoman »

I have done this previously. It is not so bad.

The os generally has the drivers. And all you need to do is pair the bt device and point repetier or mattercontrol to the bt serial port.
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jlmccuan
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Re: Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by jlmccuan »

It looks to me like the hardware is pretty straightforward. The firmware is where I'll have trouble. Anyone have the changes they used they can share?
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teoman
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Re: Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by teoman »

You would not need to change the firmware.

Maybe change the baud rate. The usb uses an ftdi chip to directly talk to the serial port on the atmel processor on the rambo.

The pins on that should be exposed. There is a thread here on some one wiring an older raspberry pi to that port. The usb was causing problems.



So in my mind it seems like it is a plug and play solution.


However, i dislike bluetooth. Everything i own with bluetooth always has some minor problems. You have to try connecting and disconnecting from time to time.

The item i have that works very reliably is my motorcycle bluetooth headset. Probably because it has to as you cannot fiddle with it while riding.

Some time ago i had used an arduino with bluetooh (one of those zigbee type modules). I was using it to control the shutters in the living room. It was using a text based protocol much like gcode but much much simpler.

It worked nicely most of the time but sometimes it would say connected but not work. And you would have to disconnect and reconnect.


Why the dislike for a separate single board computer? I think it is more convenient in that you can just upload to it over a webpage. With bt you must ensure that your computer never sleeps etc. Bt is just like a cable extension. And not a particularly good one.
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jlmccuan
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Re: Bluetooth to RAMBo

Post by jlmccuan »

I am setting up a WinBook with Matter Control and trying to eliminate as many cables as possible. I also would like to move my printer across the office from my desk and USB cables that long are giving disconnects and garbage periodically.
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