[TriEmbed] Long range digital communication (long range wifi, XBee?)

[Glen Smith]

Charles,

I played around with Moteinos https://lowpowerlab.com/guide/moteino/ for a
while and had good luck with the RFM69 radios, I don't remember what
frequency I was using.

I just recently was listening to an episode
<https://theamphour.com/398-an-interview-with-felix-rusu/> of The Amp Hour
where Chris interviewed the guy who makes these - he is getting very good
range depending on all the usual variables. It might be worth checking them
out.

Glen

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:23 PM Charles West via TriEmbed <
triembed at triembed.org> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I'm in Lansdale, PA now but I was hoping I might be able to pick you guy's
> brains.  My current big project is trying to build one or more robots to
> deliver food/drinks on golf courses.  I'm currently trying to figure out
> the best way to maintain continuous(ish) contact between a access
> point/basestation at it's base of operations and 1 or more robots operating
> on the course.
>
> At a minimum, I would like to have the robot report its basic status
> (battery percent, GPS position) but it would also be great if it could
> stream video when required to allow teleprescence steering or determination
> of what is going on.  The robot would probably be about 1 km from the base
> station at max.
>
> I'm currently considering 3 possible solutions but I'm pretty open to
> ideas:
>
> 1.  Use a mobile hotspot/cell modem:
>         For fixed $130 and monthly $20, I can get a mobile hotspot which
> provides one gig of data per month and more data for $5/gig.  If I keep the
> reporting really light, this could work but the communication would have to
> be kept pretty limited.
>
> 2.  XBee:
>          These modules seem to float somewhere between $25 and $60 in
> prices, so a pair would be somewhere in the $50 to $120 range.  Sparkfun
> had a good guide to XBee (https://www.sparkfun.com/pages/xbee_guide) but
> they are listing almost all of their products as retired (besides old
> series 1) and most of the stuff I read about XBee is from 2015-2016 so I am
> not sure what the best options are anymore.  In any case, it looks like it
> would provide a low baud rate connection over the desired range.  The main
> problem is that it requires working through XBee and making my basestation
> have to have special software to forward information.  I'm also not sure
> about security and it is certainly not going to be streaming video.
>
> 3.  Long range Wifi:
>         Rodney's done some work in this area before with his weather
> balloon projects.  I don't recall off the top of my head how far he managed
> to get but I do remember he had to use higher power than allowed without a
> higher grade amateur radio license.  That power level would not work for a
> commercial operation.  There are some companies that are selling solutions
> aimed at farms (http://ayrstone.com/www/?v=7516fd43adaa) and there seem
> to be off the shelf solutions that can get 500 ft (mostly aimed at
> hotels).  The hotel systems seem to be in the $350 range and the farm
> systems in the $500 or so.  The robot could use a high gain antenna, but it
> is not clear how much it helps.  These systems have security built in and
> potentially can stream video if the range is long enough.  Like hotspots,
> writing software for them would also be easy.
>
> What do you guys think?
>
> Thanks,
> Charlie
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