Hey, I am a university student and we have a robotics class project. I'm using the arduino for the first time. I have done all of the standard starting programs and we have a CS major in our group so programming is not a problem. We were hoping to send webcam data over wifi to be interpreted by a remote computer so that we could control a car via webcam first. I have looked around for a while now with no avail and I was wondering if anyone on here had some insight. I am not trying to use the arduino to interpret the data and display an image, just to use as a data transfer agent with the wifi shield.
Then why bring the arduino into piceture instead use a wifi cam
Probably because it would be be nice to use one wifi link for both video and control signals?
Unfortunately, it won't work: the Arduino can't move data through a wifi link fast enough to do video.
One possibility: some of the wired (Ethernet) video servers I've worked with have a serial port that allows sending signals to control pan/tilt heads. Perhaps there are wifi units that do the same? You could use that to send commands to the Arduino to control the car.
One possibility: some of the wired (Ethernet) video servers I've worked with have a serial port that allows sending signals to control pan/tilt heads. Perhaps there are wifi units that do the same? You could use that to send commands to the Arduino to control the car.
Another way to handle this is to scale the car up some (to allow you to use larger batteries), and set up a WiFi router (hacked or not), hooked to an IP camera (no need for it to be 802.11, plus wired IP cams are cheaper than WiFi IP cams) and the Arduino (over the ethernet shield). Then you have one wireless connection for both.
BTW, Serentaius, I'm doing something similar with a robot I am building, except my platform is a lot larger (thus power requirements are not likely to be an issue):
I will have the Arduino connected via USB to an on-board Intel Atom motherboard-based PC via an on-board 802.11g router; for camera(s) I am currently going to use the USB Logitech Orbit AF.
The Arduino will be for control of on-board motors (steering and drive), and a custom pan-tilt head, and later other sensor readings (I might also break these functions out into separate Arduinos - probably custom "standalone" boards). GPS data will also be fed into the PC using USB. The PC will be running Linux (Ubuntu currently), and have an on-board LAMP stack for outside world, ultimately interfacing via HTTPS (in addition to the various security - WEP and MAC filtering - provided by the router).
I've been futzing with this project for quite a while - I've been taking my time, but I have been recently trying to speed things up on it...
