Ellis
I want to build a mobile car robot with camera that can be auto charged and be controlled by my iphone over wifi and network. I have a cabin down at my farm and want to access a robot there by phone and have it do a look around to check the rooms for water leaks, mice in traps and any other things that may have gone wrong. It could also act as a security robot.
I think I would need a pc, auto charger port (like Roomba), Synthiam controller and camera with good resolution. The system would need to be very reliable and have auto reboot capability.
Can anyone make a recommendation as to how to accomplish this. Especially the auto charge, reboot capability and control.
I do have a Roomba Create. I thought I could mount a camera and Synthian controller on it and control it by Synthian mobile. What do you think.
Ellis
Your best option for simplicity would be to build the robot on a iRobot Roomba base. That would give you the auto-dock charging capability as well. Pretty good idea!
Do a search for telepresence here. There was a lot of work connecting EZ-B to Roomba. If you do build a self docking station using a Roli type Rover or other EZ-B there are A LOT of us interested in how to do this. https://synthiam.com/Question/4179
The real need in this project is the auto charge. Solving this problem is the key to this system. Solve this and we can do it with Synthian now. Does anyone know of a way to build one build onedo or buy one.
Now that there’s arduino support for ARC, it’ll be easy to implement an after market auto dock charge system. Because I’m not sure what aftermarket options are available - really the one I think of is building on a Roomba for the reason of simplicity.
Does anyone know if other docking units that could be adapted?
@elfege built a docking charging robot of his own design. There should be a description here somewhere, although I am on mobile and haven't located it yet. He doesn't seem to have posted it as a robot project.
Not sure if image uploaded but I had an airsoft pellet gun attached to a giant size RC Hummer frame and controlled by wi fi from my Motor home to my Brother's Cottage.He had a problem with Racoons in middle of the night so I could watch on my TV in the Motorhome and patrol the area around the cottage for Racoon enemy. The EZB had the camera and could run the auto fire from the Machine gun which was 11.1 Lipo powered.I wish I had an auto dock function too so I would not need to get it at 5 in the morning after it dies out.It sure was fun though, sit back with a 6 pack and was even better than a PS4 game!
The magnetic connection idea works well (I did mine with a couple of paper clips and Neodymium magnets - but I used the Roomba dock to locate).
Long Distance Location: Where is the docking station, If we had a LIDAR system working (Hint Hint @ DJ Sures ) we could get a pretty good slam map to remember where the docking station was and the path back to it.
Close distance Location: To dock at the docking, could either be use ez-robots camera and a QR code we search for or even just an ir beacon like roomba uses.