GPS Telemetry range with XBEE Pro 2

The range is very good through brick/steel in the building. I am thinking that when this thing is outside the building it will have a nice mile range via line of sight. I will do a walking test this weekend to see what kind of distance that we get.

I ordered a 2000mw Wifi booster and +9db antenna for the control laptop and also ordered a bluetooth to serial board to connect the android phone via bluetooth to the serial of the control arduino.

Here is what is onboard RCHL so far:

Chumby hackerboard with WiFi SSH and serial connections to each Arduino, including serial connection via Xbee if SSH has a problem. Autoreset SSH every 2 hours.

Arduino Mega 256 with the following sensors attached:
4 ultrasonic distance - NSEW
1 motion detector mounted on the top of the MechaTron
1 wind speed
1 digital compass
1 inertial measurement unit

Arduino UNO POE - softserial code running to watch multiple incoming serial data and then piped to XBEE Pro 2.

Arudino UNO - motor control and IP cellular backup communication for long range control piped to UNO POE serial.

POV and Zoom dome camera - IP controlled.

WiFi router with dd-wrt linksys 54G.

Android phone with bluetooth serial connection to Arduino mega.

60 Amp motor control board.

Optorelays connected to POE arduino to control on/off/reset of each other board.

Optorelay kill switch in a 'dead man' configuration.

Things are getting really fun. This weekend I want to accomplish connecting all of the sensors to the Mega 256 and have that dumping data over the Xbee and back to the control laptop. Cheers to robots!

GPS Telemetry is SENDING on RCHL!

We finally have the GPS sending over the XBEE! Here is the code that we used, very simple and easy code on the sending side:

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial GPS = SoftwareSerial(8, 9);

void setup()
{
GPS.begin(9600);
Serial.begin(57600);
}
void loop()
{
Serial.print(GPS.read(), BYTE);
}

On the receiving side, Arduino UNO with an XBEE shield in USB mode and then SiRFDemo running in windows to test output. I set the XBEE's to 57600 for their comms between each other and then the GPS is sending at 9600. Works like a charm, one second refresh rate.

Steve also has all of the boards mounted and they are great looking! Nice job :)