Streaming Camera Solutions... ideas?

Help & Support Robot Parts
1

Hi all,

At some point in the future, I need to make a decision on what camera solution I want to incorporate into my ROVer project. I’m currently integrating the use of an Android tablet as the “brains” of the robot, which connects to the MEGA ADK board. That’s working great, but I don’t know if the built-in camera on the tablet is my best bet for a camera solution.

My “ideal” would be a camera solution that I can stream live as well as do time-lapse photos as need be. The ROVer will be semi-autonomous wherein it will interface with a website/browser for directions and then act autonomously in following those directions. It would be really cool if I could stream the video from ROVer could stream to the website as well.

This is a project for the near future, but I thought I would reach out to the community for any suggestions or proven solutions. The following is a video where I describe what I’m doing on the ROVer + Android + ADK.

youtube.com/watch?v=fpsU4lS2W3E

Thanks again for any suggestions/advice!

Nick.

2

To follow-up… I’ve seen some projects interfacing the Arduino with GoPro… it got me thinking… maybe some sort of camera that does it’s own streaming and then just figuring out the methodology by which to trigger that from the Arduino (i.e. just need on/off control, basically). Garmin’s new Virb Ultra 30 action camera has streaming to YouTube, which would be a pretty sweet for live streaming solution.

3

Hi Nick,

Thank you for sharing your project on RobotShop Forum.
First, here are some nice camera modules for Arduino we recently entered.
You might have different solutions that you can use :

]As you said, the easiest way to do it might be to use the built-in camera on the tablet to stream live videos./:m]
]You can probably use an IP Camera which can be controlled by the Arduino. The IP Camera will transmit videos wirelessly to a Raspberry Pi then the Raspberry Pi will stream the video./:m]This forum post might also help you.
We wish you good luck in your project and feel free to post your progress here.

Regards,

4

Thanks very much Brahim.

I hadn’t yet considered integrating Raspberry Pi into the ROVer, but I’ll definitely do some poking around to learn more. Thanks again!

5

Hi all,

I thought I would follow-up with what I decided upon… I ultimately went with the Android camera solution seeing as how I was already using the Android tablet as the “brain” for the ROVer robot. I posted-up a video on YouTube that discusses the solution:

youtube.com/watch?v=S75I34PJrTg

…I’m quite happy with how it’s coming together - especially now that I have the live camera feed posting to the web server, which will help with the autonomous control aspect from the web interface I’m building. If anyone ends up looking to do something similar, I’m also going to be sharing the Android code and Arduino codes as detailed on the ROV-er.com website and in the video.

I do still want to look into the R Pi options down the road if for no other reason then I want to explore what that board can offer, but we’ll see :slight_smile: …fun to try stuff!

Cheers,

Nick.