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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..."
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
Also This sould be useful for upskirting and makeing fortunes (9.95 USD) on the interweb
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.
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.
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.
..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.
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.)
Anyone else think for a second that it was a remote control ACTUAL Abrams?
Now that'd be a hack.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
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.
Iraqi /. readers are impressed with the huge size of our houses.
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?!
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.
But there's no tape on Mars to attach the camera to the gun barrel!