Camera on your bot...

[prb238]

Here is a picture of the camera mounted on the front of my robot:

[prb238]

Here is another one.  Just above the camera inside the plastic cover you can see a green circuit board - that is the voltage regulator.

[prb238]

Here is the camera looking out the hole in the front cover:

[prb238]

Here is a picture of the feed from the camera out in my front yard.  I just put the robot out there and didn't turn it on because it was low on battery tonight.

[prb238]

And here is a picture of my cell phone with the X10 Commander software that I use to remotely turn the camera on and off.



I'll get the robot outside tomorrow and film a live feed as it is mowing.

[prb238]

Sorry for the delay.  Here is a video of the camera feed from the robot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=154zXRXs3lM

[shep874]

prb238 That is so cool  My Billie is again down  so won't do anything until i get it running again..   (Dang just got him back from KA  and he had a lost signal problem now a wheel  problem)  That is what i want to do but is this camera set for night?

[prb238]

The camera I have right now works ok in low light situations, but if it was pitch black with no moonlight and no light from houses and such, it would not pick up much.  I had it out in my yard on Friday night and it was dark enough for people to have their headlights on driving by and the camera was picking up enough for me to tell where it was.  I think they do make a camera as small as the one that I have currently that may perform better in little to no light , but I am guessing that it is quite a bit more expensive.

My goal with this project has been to just get it working so I went with a cheaper camera option.

Keep in mind that the more features you have the more power it is going to consume.

The next piece of this project will be to do the following:
 - Allow auto recharging to occur of the separate LiFePo battery by putting two additional charging nuts on the robot and some extra plates attached to the existing plates (insulated so no charge goes between the two)

- Getting rid of the extra battery completely and using the robot battery to power the extra devices.  

[jzawacki]

- Getting rid of the extra battery completely and using the robot battery to power the extra devices.

I'd go with that option before hacking on your charging base.  This should be as easy as running wires from the battery to your voltage regulator board (assuming it can handle 30v).

[prb238]

Yeah - I am totally on board with your recommendation.  As I thought more about hacking the base, I came to the conclusion it is not the way to go.  The voltage regulators do handle up to 30V so I should be ok there.  I am going to put in a second battery - up to this point I have only had one.  Since I will be utilizing the robot battery I feel better with having 2 so I am not reducing the mowing time.

[prb238]

I've done some more testing and the RF signal to turn on the camera doesn't work through the whole yard. I am getting a better antenna to use with the RF receiver that should increase the range to 1000 feet. It won't be that good because I am going through walls with the signal but hopefully it will be enough.

Just FYI, the RF receiver I use is Item 7046B (Seco-larm Enforcer) at smarthome.com.  The longer range antenna I am going to try is Item 0567 (Enforcer extended range RF dipole antenna).

[prb238]

Update -

The longer range antenna worked great and now I can turn the camera on/off anywhere in my yard.

I also have removed the extra battery I had in the robot to supply power to the camera and the RF receiver and have run all of that into the Lawnbott battery.  I have two robot batteries in there now and since they are wired in parallel, I just connected extra wires to the terminals of one of the batteries (that won't pull down one battery quicker than the other).  I have two voltage controllers in the set up currently - one to reduce the 29V to 12 for the RF receiver and the other reduces the 29V to 8V for the camera.

I do have another RF receiver in the robot which allows remote control of the On/Off, Charge, and Pause buttons but I haven't connected that yet to the robot batteries.  I need to look and see if I can connect that to the same voltage reducer that I mentioned above or whether I need a separate one.

I just set this up yesterday, so I don't have any data yet to see if this affects the robot runtime, but I'll do some testing and see what I come up with.  With that said, the power that these extra onboard devices take is so miniscule that I don't think it will have a big affect on the battery charge for a mowing session.