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Comment by raesene9 | Hacker News Reader

cool site.

In this line, one thing I've been looking for, but unable to find a good option for, is a robot which you can control over a wi-fi network which has a camera on it and it can roll round your house.

So my use case is to check up on my cats when I'm away. I've not seen a load of good options for this...

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I did this at one point. The cats would jump on top of it, at which point your robot won't move anymore. But at least at that point you know the cats are alright.

Second issue is the ground perspective sucks. My house really does look very different from 5cm over the ground instead of 2 meters. The cats can sleep on the table and I'd never be able to tell.

yeah I was hoping for something about 1-2ft tall ideally with an adjustable camera. Still wouldn't spot all the places but could be useful.

You can use pretty much anything for that, it only really depends on how big you want it.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/seeed-technology-c...

Ever thought about pitting one of those tiny cameras on your cats and make them upload the pictures to the cloud? That way would not have to find them with the robot.

They do have radio collars, but those only have a range of 1/4 mile or so. There are GPS equivalents but the battery life/size has never been ideal.

Checkout Loomo, I have one for testing, it works well.

http://www.loomo.com/en/

What about a RC car with a camera ?

yeah there's some options for home built I think, I was kind of hoping for an off the shelf system ideally. It kind of surprises me that there isn't one, you'd think the "wander round my house, keeping an eye out for kids/pets" market would be quite big.

I used the Zumo platform with a Raspberry Pi W instead of an Arduino board. I added a cardboard casing to house all the components.

https://www.wedesoft.de/robot/2018/06/21/zumo/

Update: Also see Explaining Computers video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZSiqj0NZgU

I've used the Double Robotics before. It's fun and works pretty well. They're expensive though!

that would be cool, but yeah a bit pricey.

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