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First of all I don’t really know if this is the right community for the question. And second, I’m a noob in telecommunications and I want to know what should I do to establish a good wireless connection (not internet) between my laptop and my robot with a raspberry pi as the main computer.

This connection needs to handle video streaming of 2-3 cameras from the robot to the laptop and send commands to the robot with a remote control plugged to the laptop. The robot will be at ~50 meters, might me more.

I repeat, I’m a noob and I don’t know if a have to buy a router to plug to the laptop or something like this.

Thanks.

Pau
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  • Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. – Community Jul 20 '22 at 13:45

1 Answers1

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There are lots of alternatives and issues here, and what you wind up with will depend on the specifics of your situation and a lot of other things only you can determine — notably including your budget.

WiFi configuration

Your Raspberry Pi has a quite respectable WiFi built-in.

  1. Pi as WiFi hotspot. (Do a web search for "raspberry pi hotspot wifi".) The laptop connects to the Pi's hotspot. The WiFi signal will limit how far the robot (carrying the Pi) can roam from the laptop.

  2. Shared WiFi. You could cover the roaming region with several WiFi routers connected together with ordinary Cat5 ethernet cable. The Pi and the laptop both connect to the shared subnet. This would let the robot roam as far as you can afford to string cables.

Bandwidth

Consider that several cameras' worth of video will all contend for the same WiFi bandwidth. The bandwidth demand depends on the resolution, the frame rate, the video codecs, and the number of cams transmitting (maybe the controller doesn't need to look at all the feeds at the same time). The bandwidth available will degrade with signal quality, which can depend on distance, terrain, other wireless traffic nearby, and even how the robot is constructed.

Experiments without the robot

  1. WiFi distance. Set up the Pi as a hotspot. Set up the simplest possible web server on the Pi (web search: raspberry pi web server). Connect the laptop to the Pi's wifi, and the laptop's browser to the pi's server. Leave the pi where it is and start carrying the laptop farther and farther away. If the connection drops before your 50 meters, you proved the pi-hotspot can't work.

  2. Cam bandwidth. Set up the pi serving all your cams, with the laptop receiving and displaying the video. Does it even work with everything co-located? If not, work on the res, frame rate, etc. If so, do the 50-meter distance check. Try it with somebody watching a youtube video nearby while someone else places a video call.

There are fancier (and more expensive) alternatives to WiFi, which you can ask about when you can formulate a more detailed and specific question.

r-bryan
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  • Ok, feels like I will go with a good 802.11ac router but the problem are the cameras. I searched for ip cameras that support 802.11ac but all of them are home security cameras with extra features that I don’t need and are quite big. Is there a way to have camera modules used in robotics and have it attached to a 802.11ac antenna so they are in the network? – Pau Jul 21 '22 at 15:16
  • @Pau, the guidelines for this Q&A site discourage follow-on questions in the comments. Please take the tour and read How to ask a good question. Then ask a new question. Meanwhile, read about Raspberry Pi cameras, USB webcams, and ESP32-camera. The latter has its own WiFi. BTW, if you are satisfied with the main answer, that green check is always appreciated. – r-bryan Jul 21 '22 at 20:07