Good Morning, I am not sure where to post this since it involves PIC microcontrollers but since this is an electronic project in prgoress I posted it here.

I just had this idea regarding RC circuits. Most of the popular RC are being controlled by a joystick or a keypad (typically 9 keys). I was wondering if you can replace that joystick or keypad with a PS/2 Keyboard. Instead of maneuvering the vehicle or robot through the use of a joystick, why not a keyboard? Type words such as "RUN", "STOP", "FORWARD" etc. or even program the PIC to do some automated maneuvers and just type in "ROUNTINE 1" or any commands and the PIC will process that command and output the programmed maneuver using the transmitter to the remote control unit.

I found some examples of keyboards that are interfaced to a PIC 16C84 to decode the ASCII output of the keyboard.

Now I am wondering how to connect the PIC16C84 to an RF transmitter (most likely a TWS-434 RX/TX pair). Is there any possible way to connect the Keyboard and PIC circuit to the transmitter? I don't have much experience with any data transmission devices.

I'm also wondering if my idea is weird or not? if it has a technical merit. I know that a keyboard is an odd thing to use in a conventional remote control unit but I was thinking to use this project as a premise to remote automation of different home appliances, where you just have to type-in some keywords and the certain appliance will do the pre-programmed code.

Thank you for reading my post. I'm looking forward to any suggestions or comments and discussions regarding this project.

Thank you once again.

 

Well "sledgehammer to crack a walnut" springs to mind...........


Why make a job hard when there is an easier solution...?

 

Very good idea...and very easy to make also, (well for me at least lol)
I too at one point had an idea like that but unfortunatly I have bigger plans than that now.

oh by the way, if you do decide to do it, I would not recommend to use the PS/2 keyboard, but rather make your own decoding scheme for the keyboard, you'll have a better control over it meaning you will be the one who decides what parts to use and how to handle it rather than having ps/2 additional circuits, but nonetheless you will still have to do "plenty" of programming in order to have a meaningfull running capabiliy