Charles, I played around with Moteinos https://lowpowerlab.com/guide/moteino/ for a while and had good luck with the RFM69 radios, I don't remember what frequency I was using.
I just recently was listening to an episode <https://theamphour.com/398-an-interview-with-felix-rusu/> of The Amp Hour where Chris interviewed the guy who makes these - he is getting very good range depending on all the usual variables. It might be worth checking them out. Glen On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:23 PM Charles West via TriEmbed < [email protected]> wrote: > Hello! > > I'm in Lansdale, PA now but I was hoping I might be able to pick you guy's > brains. My current big project is trying to build one or more robots to > deliver food/drinks on golf courses. I'm currently trying to figure out > the best way to maintain continuous(ish) contact between a access > point/basestation at it's base of operations and 1 or more robots operating > on the course. > > At a minimum, I would like to have the robot report its basic status > (battery percent, GPS position) but it would also be great if it could > stream video when required to allow teleprescence steering or determination > of what is going on. The robot would probably be about 1 km from the base > station at max. > > I'm currently considering 3 possible solutions but I'm pretty open to > ideas: > > 1. Use a mobile hotspot/cell modem: > For fixed $130 and monthly $20, I can get a mobile hotspot which > provides one gig of data per month and more data for $5/gig. If I keep the > reporting really light, this could work but the communication would have to > be kept pretty limited. > > 2. XBee: > These modules seem to float somewhere between $25 and $60 in > prices, so a pair would be somewhere in the $50 to $120 range. Sparkfun > had a good guide to XBee (https://www.sparkfun.com/pages/xbee_guide) but > they are listing almost all of their products as retired (besides old > series 1) and most of the stuff I read about XBee is from 2015-2016 so I am > not sure what the best options are anymore. In any case, it looks like it > would provide a low baud rate connection over the desired range. The main > problem is that it requires working through XBee and making my basestation > have to have special software to forward information. I'm also not sure > about security and it is certainly not going to be streaming video. > > 3. Long range Wifi: > Rodney's done some work in this area before with his weather > balloon projects. I don't recall off the top of my head how far he managed > to get but I do remember he had to use higher power than allowed without a > higher grade amateur radio license. That power level would not work for a > commercial operation. There are some companies that are selling solutions > aimed at farms (http://ayrstone.com/www/?v=7516fd43adaa) and there seem > to be off the shelf solutions that can get 500 ft (mostly aimed at > hotels). The hotel systems seem to be in the $350 range and the farm > systems in the $500 or so. The robot could use a high gain antenna, but it > is not clear how much it helps. These systems have security built in and > potentially can stream video if the range is long enough. Like hotspots, > writing software for them would also be easy. > > What do you guys think? > > Thanks, > Charlie > _______________________________________________ > Triangle, NC Embedded Computing mailing list > > To post message: [email protected] > List info: http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org > TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org > To unsubscribe, click link and send a blank message: mailto: > [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe > >
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