iPhone Hacks · Hacks, Cracks, Mods, Homebrew, Utilities

Ever wanted to use your iPhone and it’s accelerometer to control your R/C car? Well Josef Prusa did and went a step further to make it happen using OSCemote. Josef has been kind enough to post how it was accomplished for anyone else wishing to so as well.

Controlling is very easy with the iPhone 3G. It has five buttons, four of them you can use for traditional „driving“ and when you press the last one, it unlocks the accelerometer control in the same way as in many driving games available on AppStore.

Realization of this project did not take a long time, only one afternoon.

Technically it is realized in a hell-bent way, but obviously it’s functional. Schematically: iPhone (OSCemote) → WiFi → PC → Max/Msp → Serial port → Arduino → Original controller.

Thanks goes to Richard Perez for sending this into our tip line hacks@iphone-hacks.com.

Two videos have recently been uploaded at youtube in response to one another, showing some of the iPhone’s military applications. The first video below is a genuine iPhone hack it shows use of a native iPhone App controlling an iRobot PackBot. What’s a PackBot you ask? iRobot describes them as robots for “Helping warfighters and first responders tackle dangerous missions”.

This fully featured remote control program uses streaming POV video and a direct WiFi connection to the PackBot. Authors of the software Rodrigo Guiterrez and Jeff Craighead of South Florida University claim that next up they plan to utilize the phone’s accelerometers and a full screen video display to deliver a “you are there” experience for bot-steering.

The second video isn’t so much an iPhone hack because it uses a web app and could be achieved using most mobile browsing devices these days. But they did choose the iPhone to program their remote controlled UAV fly over reconnaissance mission.