Wireless video transfer...

I'm in the process of building an R/C tank, I'm going to have two .25" CCD cameras mounted on the tank (one as the "driver" and one as the "gunner"), and I need some way of wirelessly transmitting the video to a display. I need a range of at least 1000 feet.

I'm thinking of the XBee-PRO from Digi International - Making Wireless M2M Easy but those little transmitters only have a data rate of 250kbps...and I'm not sure if that's enough for video.

Any ideas?

It's not enough unless you can MPEG it in real time - I doubt there's any legal way to do video for 1000 feet?.

Kitrax said:

I'm in the process of building an R/C tank, I'm going to have two .25" CCD cameras mounted on the tank (one as the "driver" and one as the "gunner"), and I need some way of wirelessly transmitting the video to a display. I need a range of at least 1000 feet.

I'm thinking of the XBee-PRO from Digi International - Making Wireless M2M Easy but those little transmitters only have a data rate of 250kbps...and I'm not sure if that's enough for video.

Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Is there any reason why you have to encode the video digitally? 250kbps is good enough for video of some sort (compressed) for sure, but the associated complication that goes with this route is a bit daunting. Would it not be possible to use a simple video transmitter / receiver pair operating on a different frequency? I did this once on a R/C car for fun, it worked fine. For me anyway!

[just realised you have TWO cameras - that could be a problem!]

-CF

CarlosFandango said:

[just realised you have TWO cameras - that could be a problem!]

Click to expand...

Yeah... How did you do it on your R/C car? What sort of transmitter/receiver did you use?

Kitrax said:

Yeah... How did you do it on your R/C car? What sort of transmitter/receiver did you use?

Click to expand...

I only did this for a 'lark'... back in the days when I had too much time on my hands I guess!!

Well, the R/C system was a simple digital proportional commercial controller and ordinary servos, operating on 27 or 45MHz (can't recall which). The TV system was a 2.4GHz transmitter / receiver pair. By operating on different frequencies these systems didn't conflict (much! There's bound to be some interference with RF systems in such close proximity) and I could drive the car from in front of the TV. The whole thing was portable so I could go to a big space and drive it around - lots of fun.

But if you want two cameras then you need two video channels. That's possible I believe, at least it is in the UK - but you'll need a lot of video kit, and all of that will be a bit power hungry. And, if you want two tanks (why wouldn't you!) then you got an even bigger problem....