Hmm…You’re right, I didn’t really think about that stuff. Rocks could still get caught in tires though, right?
True, but not as bad as a track system. You could run over a twisty branch with a wheeled bot and have it catch in the fender, but it could work its way out easier than a track system by moving back and forth.
Lol
at police station
“hello yes, i would like to report and “accident” that happened to my robot”
“How can we help?”
“Well here it is shows rover a couple of bullet holes are in the lexan and there are a few rounds lodged in the chassis, i just cant figure out wat happen to it. do you think it fell off my front steps?”
hmm, yea evo backed up wat i was saying, its an invasion of privacy thats illegal
why dont u go up with a baked good and politleyt ask them to turn their cameras away?
anyway, it really depends how clear the trails are, i would opt for tracks on teh gravel and wat not, and if the trails are clear i would recommend tha racks too, if u set a course for the rover, and if went to check points (station one puts out a beacon, robot follows it atc atc) and u cleared those paths fairly well , i think that tracks would be ur best bet
The bot would be fun to shoot at with a quiet high velocity air rifle.
And dangerous at the same time don’t you think? 
not to the guy behind the gun 
My god! There crazy!
Anyway, I would recommend building a nice big rover. Get some large and very high wheel ad make a nice aluminium/lexan chasis insert all the sensors you need behind the lexan ( ). Maybe leave a little hole to let pass the LED lights.
It’s a nice project!
Scares me to think someone has to do this to protect his privacy.
Generally in the US, if you do something that is publically viewable (on or off your own property, then it is not considered private. A better approach might be to plant a bamboo hedge/screen a couple of feet back from the fence that would block the direct view from house to house.
Thanks for the suggestions. We are up on a hillside, where their house is about 150’ higher than ours and are probably about 900 feet away as the crow filies. That is one of the reasons I am planting so many trees, including some willows which grow very tall reasonably quickly, along with Douglas fir, Cedar, Pines, … So far I have not found any nearby cameras so this part may not turn out to be a major issue.
I wish we could simply go up with cookies to try to resolve things but I don’t think they would let us through their electronic gates…
But now back to designing something. From what I am hearing it sounds like I probably should build something larger than the standard 4wd, probably something similar to one of evolutions designs, or maybe built off of a monster RC truck. I probably try to take some time over the next several days to try to come up with a strawman set of requirements and design and see where it takes me.
An alternative design to a 4wd robot that looks interesting to me is a multiple track system, like the iRobot Packbot. I wonder how hard that would be to do?
Kurt
I believe Grant Imahara from Mythbusters did something similar to what you are describing with the Vex track kit. Might be worth your while to check it out.
Get the Tritrack kit from Lynxmotion, and use a stronger chassis. The tracks in that kit are better than just about anything I’ve seen in the price range, and are quite capable of rough terrain.
- Jon
You’ll deffinately want to use the 3" tracks, more track touching the ground will give better traction and spread the weight of the bot so it dossen’t sink in the snow during the winter months. Wider tracks will also make it much harder to tip over if your worried about those pot holes.
I have them and love them (except when driving on smooth surfaces). They’re the best for the roughest terrain, I promise! 8)
My video rover is probably a bit smaller than the 4WD platform. It’s 12" wide (with tires) and 12" long. About 4" high (8"with the camera). If you need something ready to run and complete with the video integrated into the remote and rover it would be a good bet. But if you are into building yourself, which it seems like you are, the lynx 4WD platform would probably be your best bet. A small rover like the 4WD platform is very versatile and difficult to get stuck.
If you really want to build it yourself, you can use a R/C truck for a platform, like the E-maxx or E-savage, and mount your pan/tilt camera and video transmitter to that.
If you are looking for video transmission over 300 feet reliably, a conventional 2.4Ghz wireless camera won’t do it. You will have to look into Yagi antennas, high Watt systems or 900mHz links. Same with the control. R/c will only get you so far.
I can’t help but worry that all those electric fences are going to emit a horrible amount of interference. Dependant on if they are constantly energized, have pulses of electricity, and the level of voltage and current.
Sounds like an interesting project.
Thanks, so far I thinking in two different directions. Maybe do as evolution suggested and start off 4wd platform, but the track system looks interesting as well.
If I went with tritrack with 3" track, it looks like I would need to buy the 2" kit and then buy the 3" track plus idlers, plus spacers.
One thought would be to combine to two platforms and come up with a 4 track platform, like what the Mythbuster guys did with the VEX system, but with tritracks. Not sure how easy it would be to build the body to allow for the front tracks to rotate to different angles to crawl over things, but this could be a lot of fun.
Its amazing how complicated you can make it just to annoy the neighbors.
I’m now starting to understand why the people decided to put up the electric fence. Good fences make for good neighbors.
Right!.. The neighbors are robotaphobic. lol
I took evolutions suggestions and ordered the 4wd kit to start experimenting with. This week most of our driveway was covered with a new layer of rock (railroad ballast), which should give the rover a good test. I still would like to someday some experimenting with a track based system, but I probably will want to model it first… Which implies I need to start learning a 3d modelling program!
I also ordered a camera from supercircuits, to see how well that works
Thanks everyone
You won’t be disappointed. The 4WD kit is a great platform to build off of.
How’s it coming kurte?