Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Discussion about my Wifi Radio project at http://mightyohm.com/wifiradio/ or my WL-520gU talk at NOTACON.
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Rent2Own
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:40 pm

Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Post by Rent2Own »

If I follow the Wifi Radio Build, will the router also be setup to wirelessly transmit the signal from a webcam (connected to the router on the RC car) to my laptop (I have a wireless card)? Similar to this linked build...
http://www.jbprojects.net/projects/wifirobot/

I have an Axon microcontroller, which would connect via USB to the router's USB port. And I suppose the webcam would connect via ethernet to a LAN on the router. I have the Asus WL-520gu (I've soldered in the serial port), & I have the serial(ttl) to usb cable with driver installed on my computer. I've watched it boot-up via Z term already.

I've been having a lot of trouble with this installation...
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/As ... l_Material

So I figured if the WiFi Radio build of yours will do, I'd give it a try. I'm running a macbook pro with WinXP installed on a virtual machine if I have to use it.
jeroen94704
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:27 am
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Re: Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Post by jeroen94704 »

The site is a little skimpy on the details of the software install. All they provide is a link to the installation instructions for OpenWrt. If you follow these instructions, you end up with a vanilla OpenWrt install, which means it is set up as an access point. It's unclear to me how this would allow the car to be driven over the internet though, as in that setup the router does not _connect_ to a wifi network, but rather provides a connection for others (such as a laptop with wifi).

In any case, MightyOhm's guide will get you a router configured as wifi client. I don't know how the LAN ports are wired in this case, but I don't believe you will be able to access a webcam hooked up to a LAN port without additional software/configuration.

So the short answer would be "no".

Having said that, why are you trying to install DD-WRT if the build you refer to is OpenWrt based?

Jeroen
Rent2Own
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:40 pm

Re: Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Post by Rent2Own »

I don't even know enough to have a software preference. I went with DD Wrt first because that's the first set of explicit step by step instructions I found for this router. I won't be able to do this without something like that. I've had a lot of trouble with it, so I figured I'd ask here if this method would work because it looks easier.
**I'm not trying to control this RC car over the internet. This will be a closed network between the router/car and my laptop**

I found a thread on this forum where someone was doing the same thing.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=274&p=1172&hilit=ha ... 20gu#p1172

He linked something called Tomato ( http://www.society9.com/an-easy-guide-t ... sus-520gu/ ), and I'm now looking at doing this. I was told on another forum that tomato doesn't support the USB port on this router. --> ( http://forums.wi-fiplanet.com/showthrea ... #post41426 )

If I can set up the router like these guys have done, I can get a lot of other help on the microcontroller end on the forums for where I bought it.
jeroen94704
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:27 am
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Re: Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Post by jeroen94704 »

I don't think you'll get this done without learning a little about the software side of things first. Getting vanilla OpenWrt on a router is not hard, so you could start with that. Then try to set it up so you can access the camera remotely, and go from there.

Jeroen
queBurro
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 1:33 pm

Re: Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Post by queBurro »

Rent2Own wrote:I don't even know enough to have a software preference. I went with DD Wrt first because that's the first set of explicit step by step instructions I found for this router. I won't be able to do this without something like that. I've had a lot of trouble with it, so I figured I'd ask here if this method would work because it looks easier.
**I'm not trying to control this RC car over the internet. This will be a closed network between the router/car and my laptop**

I found a thread on this forum where someone was doing the same thing.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=274&p=1172&hilit=ha ... 20gu#p1172

He linked something called Tomato ( http://www.society9.com/an-easy-guide-t ... sus-520gu/ ), and I'm now looking at doing this. I was told on another forum that tomato doesn't support the USB port on this router. --> ( http://forums.wi-fiplanet.com/showthrea ... #post41426 )

If I can set up the router like these guys have done, I can get a lot of other help on the microcontroller end on the forums for where I bought it.
the original tomato fw didn't support the usb port but someone forked the code and heh presto: http://tomatousb.org/
Rent2Own
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:40 pm

Re: Wireless Router, Webcam, RC Car?

Post by Rent2Own »

It turned out my only problem with flashing dd wrt was that I was trying it on a virtual machine OS. On my mac, I had windowsXP running the virtual machine, but when I installed winXP on a bootcamp partition it worked perfectly.

I now have my router setup as a client bridge and acting as a wireless network adapter for my laptop as a test. Works fine.

So in order to use the router as a wireless "shield" (arduino terminology) for my Axon MCU, I need to install a program like ser2net on the router. My problem is that ser2net is for serial ports and I'm using the router's USB port instead (I can use the serial port at the same time, though, to debug or see whats going on via laptop).

------------------------This is where I am now-------------
To get the drivers and ser2net installed, I had to use SCP (only worked when I WASN'T SSHd into the router) to transfer the files from computer to router.

Now I'm trying to configure ser2net to where I can see my microcontroller saying "Working"... been a pain so far. Here's what I have, from the todbot project ( http://todbot.com/blog/2010/12/16/wifi- ... -wl-520gu/ ):

# ser2net -C "3001:raw:600:/dev/usb/tts/0:57600 NONE 1STOPBIT 8DATABITS -XONXOFF -LOCAL -RTSCTS"

This isn't working for me so far, though.
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