[chbot] Robot Friendly Bluetooth board, and Arduino Nano V3 compatible

[David Churcher]

On 8/08/2011 9:15 a.m., Richard Jones wrote:
> I'm considering ordering this bluetooth board from Deal Extreme. I'm 
> hoping that it will provide short distance ttl serial comms to my 
> micromouse robot. Handy for testing acceleration and deceleration 
> without the encumbrance of cables.
>
> http://www.dealextreme.com/p/wireless-bluetooth-rs232-ttl-transceiver-module-80711

  I have a couple of these boards with different firmware, from 
Seeedstudio and Dfrobot. They work well enough, and have connected to 
every PC and Android device that I've tried. Occasionally they get 
disconnected and you have to cycle power on the board to be able to 
reconnect, but it doesn't happen very often. The pin spacing on the 
board is smaller than 0.1" so you have to solder wires to it or use a 
PCB. You can get them in a "Bee" carrier board from Seeedstudio, which 
is a bit easier to play with.

  Re the Nano, If you're looking for a really tiny and light Arduino the 
Seeeduino Film ($US19, 
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/seeeduino-film-p-689.html) is pretty 
neat. Folded up it is only twenty-something millimetres square. You can 
even snip off the parts you're not using. It is a little more expensive 
than the Nano, but comes with a tiny LiPo battery and charger circuit. 
You do need a 3.3V USB-to-serial board to program it. It's only 
ATMega168 at 8MHz, the film is obviously a bit fragile, and I have 
managed to blow up the LED output pin somehow (I think by getting the 
DTR and ground wires crossed), but the rest of the board still works OK.

Regards,
David