Webcams and the BS2
The_N3rd
Posts: 34
Hello World!
For everyone that remembers me, I still am alive! I definitely am feeling the tight schedule of a high schooler, but I still have continued on with my love of computers and technology. I have been teaching myself to make simple computer programs with a free BASIC scripter called AutoHotKey, and I've played around with the stamp a lot lately. I had some free-time today and I wanted to start a little project to expand my knowledge. I just hope I can find the time! I have a bad habit of not finishing projects that I start...
I was wondering about was webcams. I have a cheap little logitec webcam, and wondered if It could be adapted and used like the Boe-Bot CMUcam. If a webcam can be adapted and used like this, I want to have live wireless video feed from the boe-bot to my computer. Then, want to be able to wirelessly control my Boe-Bot from my computer in another room. It would be a little spybot. (no pun intended
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The big question is can I have the bs2 send video from the webcam to my computer through the serial COM port, or maybe even wirelessly. It it is even possible, The Parallax Transceiver are a little expensive for me, so is there a cheaper or free-to-build alternative?? Any Input on these ideas would be great because I have no clue where to start.
Thanks for your help,
The Nerd
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the NERD, Kelie B.
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· If electricty comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
For everyone that remembers me, I still am alive! I definitely am feeling the tight schedule of a high schooler, but I still have continued on with my love of computers and technology. I have been teaching myself to make simple computer programs with a free BASIC scripter called AutoHotKey, and I've played around with the stamp a lot lately. I had some free-time today and I wanted to start a little project to expand my knowledge. I just hope I can find the time! I have a bad habit of not finishing projects that I start...
I was wondering about was webcams. I have a cheap little logitec webcam, and wondered if It could be adapted and used like the Boe-Bot CMUcam. If a webcam can be adapted and used like this, I want to have live wireless video feed from the boe-bot to my computer. Then, want to be able to wirelessly control my Boe-Bot from my computer in another room. It would be a little spybot. (no pun intended
)The big question is can I have the bs2 send video from the webcam to my computer through the serial COM port, or maybe even wirelessly. It it is even possible, The Parallax Transceiver are a little expensive for me, so is there a cheaper or free-to-build alternative?? Any Input on these ideas would be great because I have no clue where to start.
Thanks for your help,
The Nerd
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the NERD, Kelie B.
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· If electricty comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
Comments
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- Stephen
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the NERD, Kelie B.
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· If electricty comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
You also may want to have a look at this... it might be what you are looking to do... http://www.jawed.com/camera/
Alright, thanks for all of the Ideas! Keep `em coming!
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the NERD, Kelie B.
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· If electricty comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
Post Edited (Nerdy NASA boy) : 2/6/2007 1:48:52 AM GMT
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Dale Bartel
Portland Or
1. Use your BoeBot as the basic robot platform
2. Purchase a TWS-434A transmitter and RWS-434 receiver and use the set up defined here...http://www.rentron.com/Stamp_RF.htm Renolds Electronics sells these as does SparkFun... do some google searching to find the best price, but both units are only a few dollars.
3. Purchase a sugarcube wireless spycam like this http://cgi.ebay.com/Wireless-Mini-Spy-Camera-Spycam-Security-Cam_W0QQitemZ270087000684QQihZ017QQcategoryZ48631QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem... again, do good search on E-bay for a good price... I was able to get one for $28 including shipping
4. Take the next step using info from the sample programs attached.
As you see, I have pointed you in the right direction without giving you the complete solution so you can have some fun and challange putting it all together.
This is a good project that will give you some challange while keeping costs to a minimum.
Post Edited (Steve Joblin) : 2/6/2007 12:44:53 PM GMT
I think that first I should learn how to do the server/internet side of the project first. Also, I'm going to start out with a wired version for power, video and control. It will be a little more basic to start out with, and then I can convert it to wireless later. Do I need to learn anything about php so I can control send commands to the robot remotely?
This site (www.jawed.com/camera/) gave this code, and I wondered if this was a good place to start learning?
if (isSet($dir)) { $fp = fsockopen ("YOUR.IP.ADDR", 443, &$errno, &$errstr, 30); if (!$fp) die ($errstr); fputs ($fp, $dir); fclose ($fp); }This is definitely going to be a challenge and a learning experience for me.
Thanks a lot,
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the NERD, Kelie B.
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· If electricty comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=627128
PM me if you need any help with the php.
,Travis
The idea is that you would enter your commands into the debug terminal of the IDE, send it serially to the sending stamp, then have the sending stamp serout the command to the transmitter which is picked up by the receiver on your boebot and serin to the boebot stamp.
Once I figure out how the stamp is going to receive commands, I have to develop some way of controlling it from a remote machine. Will I have to set up a simple server? I do have 2 old servers that I bought from my school (Compaq proliant 800) just sitting around. Yet again, I have dialup, therefore we can’t get a static IP address. Grrrr...so many problems. This is why I'm starting out simple. For now, I'm going to develop local control of the robot, and then I'll develop remote control.
Again, thanks for all of your input!
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the NERD, Kelie B.
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· If electricty comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
I have dial up and i let VB download all night and i really recommend it.
1 proc SendCmd {x} { 2 set COMMPORT "com2"; 3 set fh [noparse][[/noparse]open $COMMPORT w+]; 4 puts $fh $x; 5 close $fh; 6 }Here's a desription of how it works:
Line 1 defines a new procedure (proc) named SendCmd, which takes 1 argument
Line 2 uses the set cmd to make the COMMPORT variable to com2 (my com port)
Line 3 sets fh (abrev. for filehandle) to the results of the command sequence in the [noparse]/noparse brackets. Inside the brackets, you use the open command to open the file name stored in COMMPORT for writing (w+).
Line 4 puts to the filehandle the value of x. it write the contents of x to the serial port
Line 5 closes the filehandle
Line 6 closes the procedure
$ in front of a variable name means to use the value stored in the variable
set x 10 creates a variable named x, and sets it equal to 10
puts x prints x to the screen
puts $x prints 10, since it is the value stored in x
To run this interactively, you start a tcl shell, then use the source command to load it into memory. So if you save the procedure in a file called robot.tcl, when you start the tcl shell, cd into the directory where robot.tcl is located and type source robot.tcl.
Pretend your Boe-Bot program uses letters to run commands - a: go forward, b: go reverse, c: stop. To send the commands from the tcl shell (after loading the source file), type SendCmd a, then press enter, SendCmd b, SendCmd c, etc.
The code sample above is one procedure that I have been using for a Boe-Bot simulator. The simulator is built on the HomeWork board, and I use LEDS to represent motion. My simulator is very basic, but it simulates the following directions forward, forward left, forward right, reverse, reverse left, reverse right, pivot left, pivot right, and stop. I also have a piezo speaker for signaling, as well as a light sensor, temperature sensor, and a servo.
There aren't as many books available on Tcl as PHP or PERL, but it is a very powerful language. If you want to try it out, you can download an installable version from ActiveState called ActiveTcl. It's free, and it isn't too large (21mb). Then you can check out this tutorial to get you started:
www.bin-co.com/tcl/tutorial/index.php
If you decide to try it out, download and and get ActiveTcl running. When you have that finished, post here and I'll upload my Tcl code and the BS2 code. Between the two, you should be able to get a Boe-Bot moving.