Espro Robot Car Bluetooth Control with OSOYOO Imitation Driving APP

The OSOYOO Espro board is a credit-card-sized, mini ALL-IN-ONE Motor Control Board. It integrates an ESP32 MCU and an L293DD H-Bridge dual-channel motor control module, allowing users to program two sets of motors directly via the Arduino IDE to control a robot car’s movement.

Equipped with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities, the Espro board enables users to send remote control commands. This allows for seamless operation of the robot car through mobile apps or other devices, significantly simplifying the vehicle’s overall architecture. Additionally, the board features a dedicated MPU6050 slot, which supports an external MPU6050 module for advanced robot car navigation.

In this project, we will use OSOYOO Imitation Driving APP to connect Espro board with Bluetooth and control the car movement and speed.

Pre-Connected GPIO pins between ESP32 and I/O devices

In Arduino Setting->Preference, please copy and past following link into Board Manager Url field:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json

Then Select the Correct Port below the Board Option.

Click ➔ Button to compile the code and upload to Espro board.

After the code uploaded into Espro Board, Open Serial monitor in Arduino IDE, set Baud rate to 9600:

In Serial monitor, you will see the Espro Device name and BLE address(see above picture). Please write down these information. You will use the name/address to connect Espro board in OSOYOO Imitation APP.

Download and Install OSOYOO Imitation Driving APP

OSOYOO imitation driving Robot APP

search “OSOYOO imitation driving” in Google Play Google Play or Apple APP store (Note: If you can not find this APP in Google Play, you can directly download the APP from following link: https://osoyoo.com/test/mockdrive.apk )

After Install Above APP in your cell phone.  Please put your robot Car on the ground, turn on the battery power.

Step 3) Connect Robot Car BLE device to mobile Phone
Open the APP and Click Connect Button as following.

After Clicking Connect, a Bluetooth device list manual will pop up. As ESP32 is a BLE device, the list will show BLE device Scanning as following picture:

After about one minute, BLE device scanning will change to BLE Device Found,  please select the BLE device whose address matches the address shown in Step 1). If you are using iPhone, select the Device name “C3_BLE” or “Esp32_RobotCar” or the name you set in the Arduino Code.

Once the BLE  is connected, you can DRIVE the car  with APP.
Control Button in the APP

• Engine toggle : When Engine toggle is set to OFF(white), car will stop and all buttons in the APP will be disabled. When Engine toggle is set to ON(red), car will start to move. All other movement control buttons will active.
• Forward/Backward gear switch: This gear switch can control the car is moving ahead or reverse like real car gear.
• F1,F2,F3,F4,F5 customized button. In this lesson, we only use F5 which pause the the car movement. The difference between F5 and Engine OFF button is that Engine OFF button when touched, all other buttons will be disabled. You should toggle Engine button again to enable other button. On the other hand, when F5 is clicked, the car will stop but all other buttons is still active. Even you do not touch any button just change your cell phone angle position(like you move the steering wheel), the car will move again.
• Direction Steering Wheel : When you rotate your mobile phone angle, the steering wheel will change angle as per your mobile phone rotation angle. This will make your car change direction. For example, when steering wheel make clockwise rotation, car will move to left. Remember, the steering and Forward/Backward gear should work together same as you are driving a real car. For example, when you want back your car to a right side packing lot, you need set Gear to R position and rotate your steer to count-clockwise direction.
• Speed+: Make the robot car speed up
• Speed-: Make the robot car slow down