Building a Wired LAN-Based Mobile Vehicle Interface

In this book, an interface circuit was built to connect a mobile vehicle controller to a PC via its LPT, this PC was a node of a LAN with other PCs, and it was considered as a server, and the other PCs were considered as clients. Every PC in this LAN had the ability to control the mobile vehicle manually using either a keyboard or a mouse. A webcam was mounted on the vehicle and plugged in the USB of the server, this webcam was used to transfer video to the server then to the client via LAN. A security method was applied to all PCs in this LAN to access the control of the mobile vehicle, this security method was a simple user name and password authentication method, and it was used to avoid unauthorized access. Beside of the manual control of the vehicle using a keyboard or a mouse, the vehicle could be controlled automatically by following a bright object from the video captured by the webcam which was mounted on the mobile vehicle. Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 was used as a programming language for implementing the work of this book with the support of other software controls to deal with video capturing and image processing techniques.

Firas Al-Saedi is the Head of Computer Engineering Department at Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad, Iraq. He has a Ph.D. in Electronics and Communication Engineering.