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The Crawlspace Tankcam
Saint Aardvark writes "Here's a page on the fun you can have with a remote control Abrams tank and a wireless video camera. "I really wanted a way to look for under house leaks and stuff and, in the manner of a responsible home owner, get early warning so I could increase the effectiveness of... Ok, that's a lie. In reality, I wanted an excuse to put a camera on my R/C tank and drive it around scary tunnels, and this just happened to fit my purposes perfectly." Movies included!"
Like the bigger version of these Desktop R/C Mini-Rovers with optional wireless video cam?
:)
Here's the Coral Link since this guy put so many photos on one page, I read its hit counter at 230, we'll see how long before it's dead
Movies Included = Slashdotted Soon
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"Nothing to see in these dark tunnels, move along..."
Not anymore.
Now all we need is laser tag gear and it's ready for front yard battles!
Putting a camera on my R/C tank
...but it was still uncomfortable. The floor was something like 18" from the 'ceiling' on my crawlspace. I had to be really careful or I'd hit my head, but it wasn't so bad because of the nice soft padding on the ceiling.My shirt, just kidding.
...which spread. Within 5 minutes of leaving the hole, my entire body was itching, especially my exposed skin. As it turns out, the fluffy ceiling in the crawlspace was in fact fiberglass insulation. When I was a kid, my parents repeatedly told me to stay away from insulation because of the itchiness. I assumed this was just a trick to keep me from finding presents in the attic, so I ignored the advice but some how never worked up the energy to go treasure hunting. While I still think it's possible they stored presents up there, the itchiness of my old teddy bear I got for Christmas as a child makes a good deal more sense now.
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
1. The Problem
I had to crawl around under my house recently to figure out where to run some wires, but it was dang uncomfortable. My foundation isn't a slab, at least not on the top.
It's gravel.
The sharp kind.
So after throwing away my bloody shirt and healing, I put some cardboard down and crawled around some more, and it was better.
After crawling around in this claustrophobic space for a while, I crawled out. Something began to slowly occur to me. It was like an itch, but I couldn't put my finger right on it. After another minute, I realized it was an actual physical itch.
time passes
After a few weeks, I thought back to completing my under house survey. I really wanted a way to look for under house leaks and stuff and, in the manner of a responsible home owner, get early warning so I could increase the effectiveness of... Ok, that's a lie. In reality, I wanted an excuse to put a camera on my R/C tank and drive it around scary tunnels, and this just happened to fit my purposes perfectly.
2. Tanks for the help
I started out with an R/C tank I bought last year. It's got a lot of articulation. The turret rotates, and the barrel goes up and down, so I figured that plus the treads would make it a good platform.
The wireless camera I had around the house was one I had bought for another project last year off the eBay. It seems just about perfect for the job as it is super small, self contained, and seems to have good range.
One thing I noticed during testing was that the camera had poor low-light performance despite the 6 infrared LEDs on the face, so I included a mini Mag-Lite in my plans.
I pondered the best way to mount my booty, then decided to focus on putting the camera on the tank first.
3. Immediate success was not forthcoming
(eg, "stupid damn tank")
First, I tried a clever combination of scotch tape and... more tape. The end result was a pretty skewed camera, "mounted" to the turret in the loosest sense of the word. When I drove the tank, the 'tape snowball' flopped around in all directions like a wet metaphor. I realized that the only way this would work would be with a good supply of Dramamine, so I thoughtfully stepped back and reconsidered. By 'thoughtfully' I of course mean 'fitfully', and by 'stepped back and reconsidered' I mean 'ripped the camera off the tank and immediately gave up on the whole idea'.
4. Slightly less failure
A few hours later, my wife asked me if I needed anything from the store. Eager at the idea of not having to actually do the shopping myself, I answered in the affirmative. She ended up getting me some painters tape, easier to work with then scotch tape, a little more resilient (which is strange, because painters tape is designed to be easier to remove so it doesn't pull up stuff), and a lot more blue. Using this, I attached the mini Mag-Lite to the barrel and taped the camera next to it. Theoretically, this should give me a platform from w
Boys! - were going in. Shoot it in the CPU!
Dashboard Widgets
Also This sould be useful for upskirting and makeing fortunes (9.95 USD) on the interweb
Something like a little Mindstorm 6-legged crawler would work well. And the camera movement would be more like Doom with bouncing rather than a flat, linear camera movement with the tank.
The mini-Maglite was a stroke of genius.
I have good Karma, I moderate fairly. What did I do to deserve this?
My hosting service just caught fire.
Mirror if needed
All I know is, when I write Porky's IV, it'll have this device in it.
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
... but, it'd be fun to use it with this:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/5b5f/
ajf
From TFA:
;-)
After a minute of trying, I realized I would have to go down myself and unstick it. I climbed down the hole and looked down to see that it was about 10 feet away, apparently jammed up on a rock.
I dropped to my stomach and began to crawl towards it, pushing as much cardboard ahead of me first to minimize my time in the pain zone. I crawled ahead and made it to the tank, then pulled it free of the rock.
Ummm... I appreciate the geekiness and all, but couldn't you have just looked around at this point!
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The page include a 6 digit counter at the bottom of the page. As we speak, its increasing by about 100 hits every 10 seconds... poor guy :)
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Just tell me when they get a fricken argon laser beam on it.
This-site-is-hosted-on-a-toy-tank jokes begin!
http://hallert.net/mech/mechcostume.htm/
~Exar
It looks like he was almost eaten by a grue.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Got stuck on a rock? Maybe it has the same syndrome that the Mars rover had ;)
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
... the best part of both vids is the soundtrack. That kid sounds so cute! esp the "My pizzaaa!" bit.
Exploring under the house and Tanks view of me rescuing it.
He isn't kidding, that is listed as his site in his profile. He also has excellent karma, so he has more credibility.
Oh, and check out his stats: They'll be interesting to check in a day or so.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue"
its so funny to just keep refreshing and watch this guy's hit counter go up by 10 every secondl lerttank.net.counter.counter.htm/
http://hostingtoolbox.com/bin/Count.cgi?df=www.ha
..that this guy is married and not in attendance at any middle school/high school/place with changing rooms, heh.
Why not drag a power/control cable behind it? The battery wouldn't be a limitation and if it gets stuck, give the cable a light tug. Also, you would lose a lot of weight from the battery. You could upgrade the motor to the gun turret allowing a greater range than "down" and "slightly less down"
I read a story about exploring small tunnels in the pyramids using things like this (not toys, but the same idea) and the people doing it were finding lots of neet stuff.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
The sharp kind.
So after throwing away my bloody shirt and healing, I put some cardboard down
Knee protectors are $9.95 at the Home Despot.
rj
Duct tape!
Knee protectors? For his chest? Is there something we should know about the position of your knees as compared to the rest of us?
--
i think this topic was just posted so the site could be slashdotted. I mean first the UK military site and now this all in one day. Soon enough we will slashdot the entire internet and control cyberspace. Im on to you now slashdot...
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
http://blizzard.rwic.und.edu/~nordlie/robotics/mar k6.html
Obviously, now that we have recon covered we need to think about adding offensive capabilities. I mean, what good is it to identify all the major structural supports if you have no way to take them out? Robot Wars-esque saw blades are probably unsuited for implementation on the existing hardware base, even if external power could be supplied (viz. those "anemic motors"), so I'm thinking along the lines of a small thermal lance or incendiary package.
"There are hundreds of game theorists at the gates, sir, and they want to hold an election!"
"Those were not his knees, captain. Not everyone keep their genitals in the same place"
From the website:
2/11/05 - Just got posted to http://slashdot.org/ - Holy crap. I'm paying like $7 a month for hosting via http://www.hostsave.com/ and I'm hoping this plug will help me avoid getting a huge bandwidth bill. If you start up with them, feel free to tell 'em where you heard about them from! Please, I have children to raise! We have a pizza restaurant in Springfield, OR. 15% off any orders at Figaro's Pizza if you say you saw it on slashdot.
welcome my new tank-driving, mini Mag-Lite toting, camera carrying overlords.
I kinda stopped reading at "remote control Abrams tank". That's just plain fun, with or without the wirless video camera. I don't need no webpage to tell me that.
I mean, come on. As if driving a remote control M-1 Abrams blind isn't "fun" enough in the first place.
(Although I admit - probably more fun if you have a remote control video camera, rather than having to be anywhere near the tank in order to get footage of all the car-smashing, lightpole-snapping... well, like Mom said, it's all fun until someone gets their house crushed like a bug.)
Read the article to the end. I'm already ordering.
Ever since seeing Home Alone 3, I've thought that something like this would be a lot of fun (it never occured to me that it'd have practical applications also).
What would be even neater is if you could interface a computer with the remote and camera feed. You could, theoretically at least, take pictures of it's path through the house, and then write a small program to steer the vehicle around a pre-determined path, based on where in the cameras vision known objects are.
From there it wouldn't be too big of a chore to have the program notify you, or react differently, when unknown objects come into view, or if it gets into unknown territory. Just think, your own sub $100 roving security system!
Oh! And as for Home Alone 3... While it's by far not a great movie, it's actually pretty good, and is by far the best of the series (Yeah, I know that doesn't say much for it still...)
Wire the camera up to a DSP running image stabilization and enhancement software. An perhaps a PWM for the motor, (similar to those used to creep electric trains) so that he can drive at variable speed.
My rights don't need management.
by Will Knight
12:50 17 September 02
A robotic probe sent to explore beyond a mysterious stone seal inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, has unlocked one mystery only to reveal another.
On Tuesday evening, the Pyramid Rover crawled 64 metres along a 20 cm2 tunnel in the centre of the pyramid. On reaching the end, it drilled through a mysterious stone obstruction resembling a type of door often used to guard a burial chamber.
But after passing a camera through drilled hole, the probe found only a second door blocking its way.
...
But the obstruction at the end of the passage poses a mystery. It is made of limestone, which is normally only used to seal individual chambers, and has two brass handles attached.
...
The initial seeder for the torrent was so slow it took 30 minutes to complete, and only a few seconds to wonder why I bothered when I watched the videos which had hardly any more content than the two pictures shown on the site.
You should have used a Big Track! (Just kidding)
I think a large-wheeled vehicle would have navigated the terrain a bit better. The BigFoot might have worked better....and saved you a half pint of blood.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
No reason to skirt around the issue, the videos from the tank I watched were very poor quality. I understand they were wireless, but why not stash some treasure in the crawlspace to let all the /.ers take part in the discovery. I mean if through all the darkness and quick jerky motion, the tank could have discovered this, how flipping sweet would that have been?!
This guy is not the brighest. Definitely in line for a Darwin award. I flipped through the site and have concluded this guy has at most an eight grade education.
BTW, don't lay ceramic tile over vinyl...
I have the same camera. The 6 infrared LEDs on that camera are inoperative. They only work on the black & white camera model, which shares the exact same housing. The circuitry required for infrared to augment an RGB display is much more complex than the circuitry required to augment a monochromatic display, and thus couldn't fit within the housing.
It is the blue tape that makes this art.
Now that's something I'd crawl over sharp rocks and fiberglass for!
Does this with his CAT!
What is cooler Tank Cam or Cat Cam?
Still a worthy scientific/engineering accomplishment in its own right.
Yes, it was great fun!
:) It's a relatively inexpensive project and it's unbelievable fun... especially if you have pets to tease.
I picked up this little wireless camera at first with the notion that I'd place it on a kite and play with aerial video. But in testing, my brother an I came up with the brilliant idea of attaching it to his RC corvette!
The results were terrific once we got it all tuned in. We were driving this vette all around his house based on what we saw on his big projected TV image. Then a HUGE DOG (actually, a relatively small dog in real life... some kinda rat terrier or something like that) came to attack the vette. It was very dramatic and made all watchers kinda jump then fall over laughing.
I only wish we had recorded the experience on video!
My 10 year old son built one of those screaming fast RC cars in camp and I mounted one of those cameras on it. We stayed in the garage and ran it up and down the street, even UNDER moving cars (they honked like mad).
Try it! It's a blast. A couple of elderly neighbors were not amused though.
The one trouble we encountered is that the cameras are analog and any 1.2 GHz digital portable phones in the area make a good deal of interference so you may have to try a 900 MHz camera as well to see what works in your area. Another solution might be one of those cameras with a more powerful transmitter which would also increase the range from the present aprox 500 feet max usable.
Cameras are overrated. What would be nice is a R/C tank which would describe what it sees to its owner:
It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
seriously, his website is holding out quite well
I worked at Wal-mart during a remodel. One of the contractors ran network cable with a RC Truck Toy. It was pretty amusing watching this thing drive around up above on the cable runs. I dont know if any other network people do this, but it sounds like a good solution to a big problem. Does someone make an offical RC Cable runner? (Please do not comment on Wal-mart, I know I feel dirty)
mnewberg.com
not bad for a sat morning, hasn't brought the trans-adlantic link down yet tho' :)
"This does not bode well!" - H.T. Duck.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I have been doing this for years already, but instead of a regular RC tank, I used one that actually shoots 6mm airsoft BB's. Definitely entertaining to drive it down the hall way in the dorm, let it loose and see people's faces :-p
Because I read the intro and I thought it referred to a full sized remotely controlled abrahms.
Well I can dream
I'm paying like $7 a month for hosting via http://www.hostsave.com/ and I'm hoping this plug will help me avoid getting a huge bandwidth bill.
Hah! Good luck.
I use a wireless cam mounted to a RC Jeep augmented with a bunch of white LEDs to chase my cat around. Always good for a laugh.
Boston Water & Sewer has been doing something similar to the article for ages. RC Car with a camera mounted to inspect pipes. Not so fun to watch. Basically looks like a looped tape.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
24k and counting and its still up
FIRES? I would love to see a video of it if it does indeed fires... Destroy the toy truck you found, AKA the WMD... I live 4-5 hours north of you! ;)
May
Anyone else have thoughts of battery powering a Mac Mini, equipped with airport and an iSight for applications like this?
Seems to me you could plop a Mini and an iSight on just about any remote controlled vehicle and have quite a bit of fun with it. You could use iChat to get high-resolution high-framerate remote video and audio.
Hell, the mini could be the robotic brain for the vehicle as well. This sounds like a great new project - the "Mac Mini robotics project!"
Gotta get me one of those now...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
http://www.lynxmotion.com/images/jpg/eh209.jpg
y ID =57
more practical
http://www.lynxmotion.com/Category.aspx?Categor
Easy to modify to use with larger wheels for a bit better clearance and differential drive so you still maintain the agility of the tank.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Pretty much everything is made in Asia and that isn't an indicator of bad quality anymore.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
I have seen it in person (not in motions) since I am a friend of his. It's amazing. Eveyone is in awe of it. :)
:)
I jokedly darely him to wear his mech suit in the building's elevators.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Way back in 1987 or so, I got permission to purchase a Radio Shack R/C tank on the company dime. We needed to pull cables through an already overcrowded cable raceway, and there were severe access issues in certain areas. The R/C tank worked wonders, drawing a chase-tape through the confined spaces. We used the chase-tape to pull the bigger cable bundles through. We'd tried the tennis-ball-and-string trick earlier. I'll bet the ball it still dangling from the trusswork it got stuck on.
The fun part was getting reprimanded for misusing company funds. Some middle-manager reviewed my expense report, and gave me a stern lecture and a severe finger-waving. I told my supervisor, who promptly went upstairs and bitched him out. Apparently the entire 5th floor staff got an inadvertent earful. That was one of few jobs I've had where my boss actually gave a crap about the folks who reported to him.
I don't think your pizza oven is gonna get much work when you have such a lovely fire going on inside the server :)
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Back in 1997 I was using my 4x4 toyota r/c truck to run cable through tunnels in the field...
Well, actually, I wanted to put one of those damn x cams or whatever they were called on a Kyosho Mini-Z (I highly recommend this site -- they were super friendly with good prices).
This was supposed to be a combination of an "I can do this" project combined with an upskirt cam for the bank I worked in at the time. Unfortunately, in between my "ooh ooh ooh I want the Porsche" RC car spending spree (4 grown men buying about $2k worth of toys at once) and "oh fine I'll buy a goddamm camera just to see what it is" (back then my girlfriend never had time due to finals so I had some spare cash) I neglected to check how BIG those remote cams actually were...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
see http://www.inuktun.com/
Mod parent: "+1, Star Trek penal asteroid reference"
:^)
heh heh...he said "penal"
Kirk: "I'm just lucky that thing had knees"
"Those were not his knees, captain. Not everyone keep their genitals in the same place"
Maybe someone can back me up on this, but I think this same quote was used by Han Solo in the Jedi Academy series of books. For some reason I remember him being imprisoned and forced to work in a spice mine and he encountered a huge alien that also had genitals where his knee caps should have been. Upon kicking/punching him in the knee caps the alien fell in pain and the Kirk quote seems like it was the exact same quote in one of the Jedi Academy books. Can anyone confirm/deny this?
I did this, with a R/C Hummer and an X-cam wireless (BEFORE they were sold as peeping-toms in internet popups). Picture quality wasn't great, and only worked outdoor, pointed forward with no tilt/pan/zoom.
(Actually the first one of these I built was an old video camera duct taped to a gas R/C buggy. Other than bottoming out the suspension, and having to wait till after a run to see the results, it was pretty cool).
But what really made it, was a heads-up "Virtual Reality" video display. I can't afford a Sony Glasstron so I just used a cheapo head-mounted CRT I found at Fry's. It felt like you were actually driving the car. Especially fun was running a dirt R/C track in it, and rollovers/endos.
I predict this to be the future of R/C toys. Once we have good quality, lightweight wireless video with a decent (half mile or so) range, that we can drop in an R/C airplane or helicopter, and inexpensive decent quality VR goggles (stereo would be best), it becomes like really flying the thing. Add some digital transmitting avionics for altimeter/airspeed/VSI/GPS and it might be a decent training tool.
We know the army is using this for "backpack" RPVs and APVs. And movie companies are using them instead of helicopter shots. So they should become consumer technology soon enough.
Also, picture these for war games (like we used to play with the Big Trac, but with real control of the vehicle and short-range offensive weapons. Combine it with Battlebots - pilots "drive" the vehicles.
(P.S. A Beowulf cluster of these, and my robot army will be unstoppable!)
I just can't get into the crawlspace because of the spiders. When the plumbers have been about, 100% of them have shuddered when the topic turns to snakes the dogs have captured & killed of late.
Being underground with those spiders is enough to freak me out - even thinking about it is pretty nasty.
Just so you know, the 1.2Ghz band that the camera used in the project is almost certainly not FCC part 15 registered. So unless you are a ham radio operator, caveat emptor.
Great project. And I love the writing style.
(at 200mw I doubt your going to have the fcc knocking on your door)
Why mess around with the wimpy stuff
get one of these monsters
http://www.interdacom.ru/~tanks/
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers