Bluetooth I2C Interface Module

The Challenge

Not so much a complete robot, rather a very important robot component. The challenge here is to build a Microchip PIC based I²C to Bluetooth device.

The protocol used by the bus master to address device on the I²C bus is completely up to you but the end result must be the ability to send/receive information to/from a BlueTooth equipped desktop PC. (Edited 2008-09-13) Extra merit will be awarded for the ability to take input from a Wii remote.

Your Rights

The total cost of parts must be less than US$40 or UK£20 (whichever is lower by this Christmas). this should include the cost of all hardware components. It would be foolish to include the cost of the time you spend developing the firmware.

Entrants must be prepared to submit full technical specifications in order that the hardware, software and firmware can become part of an open-source project. As such, commercially available solutions, or entries which rely too heavily on commercially available hardware, softwware or firmware shall be disqualified.

Components should be readily available, so if you're going to rip a BlueTooth receiver out of a mobile phone, make sure you have lots of mobile phones available because it would be a pretty rubbish open source project with only one piece of hardware available. 

Given more than one potential winner (ha ha ha), the one coded in the lower level language will win. RISC assembler will win over C which will win over BASIC.

My Rights

The bar is quite high for this one, so I will consider all entries and possibly award a prize for a partial working solution. (I will decide what a 'partially working solution' is. It seems likely, though, that a connection to a PC would constitute 'partially working' witht he Wii connectionbeing a bonus.) 

The Prize

The prize will be my undying admiration and a place in the history books. I reserve the right to withdraw this prize.

Seriously though, within reason, I will manufacture and give you any small, single-sided PCB which is not too complex. (I decide what 'small' is, I decide what 'complex' is and someone else already decided what 'single-sided' is, so you better tell me what you want made before you enter the challange.) I make these in my garage, so the grade is not high, but I use them, which makes them "acceptable quality."

Team Entries

This is likely to be a team challenge rather than an individual challenge, so if anyone else would care to sponsor it, please feel free to add a prize. I am prepared to make a few PCBs for individuals. (Guess what? I decide what 'a few' is.)

End Product

idaniel suggests an LMR Global Project. I think I've turned the thread around so that it's about a distributed robot controller with several microcontrollers, each with its own task. I've just finished an I²C controller PCB for this robot. I'm populating it and developing the software at the moment. The result of this challenge would be another component in this distributed platform, pushing down the cost of high powered hobby robotics.