Alight so I was cleaning up some garbage form my house, and I came across an old web cam. I decided that I should put that to a use, as the web cam was decent. it worked outside with battries just like a camara, and it worked as web cam. One can do alot of things with a good camera. I was thinking of making it as my room monitoring device but then thought it would use of lot of memory, so why not make something just for fun.
So i went to the market bought a remote controlled car and took the camara apart, just kept the circuit with the batty holder. Also the web cam had a USB output to plug it into the PC or laptop. My only question was, how can I transfer my data using that USB port into my laptop wirelessly. So I went out trying to do some research, and came across a facinating device called "Xbee".
Xbee (Pronounced as ZigBee) is a suite of high level communication protocol using small, low power digital radios. It comes with a USB output, which enabled me to put it to use it to my webcam and connect it to the computer. There is a pair of xbee needed for this purpose and it costs you around $30 dollars each. When you use only 2 xbee, it makes the project easy as one does not have to define which one is master and which one is slave. If you plan on using more then 2 xbee's you have to specify which one is master and which one is slave.
So after this, it was very easy for me to trasfter data from the webcam to my laptop, and you can turn on the webcam, and the laptop, and ride your wireless remote control car around. After making this project, I wanted to see what other things you can do with xbee. Few things that came to my mind was a wireless speaker, that you can carry around the house, while you keep you laptop at one place. I also want to try to make a wireless mouse using xbee.
Try it your self, let me know if you have any suggestions. Email me at ivyas88@gmail.com
Enjoy!
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