Hi,

First post here - fantastic forum with a wealth of experience and information, hoping you guys can help.

Longer term I will go ArduRover with mission planning capabilities, however for now I am working on a project that has 3 main criteria:

1. Real time control via custom web based dashboard (HTML5).
2. Real time telemetry data display in custom dashboard.
3. Real time camera stream in dashboard.

The reason for the custom web based UI - the rover was the hook for making learning of some web based development technologies more interesting, rather than doing the standard "purchase order/sales order" stuff I'm normally accustomed to!  So for current project I do not want to use the APM mission planner, fantastic though it is.

All of these requirements are currently fulfilled and work on the basis of a wifi comms platform.  I have an onboard raspberry pi with webserver serving the HTML control UI, which sends serial commands to the Arduino Uno.

I now want to extend the range beyond what typical wifi can offer.  500m max range would be great.  3G is not an option for me with regular travel between countries (roaming costs, sim private IP addreses etc).  I look to the community for options, and have a few thoughts of my own, which I would really appreciate to be sense checked before any more time and money investment.

I would look to offboard the rPi from the rover to the base station.  This will still host the control UI.  I'm thinking of two 3DR radios, one at base station connected to Arduino, one on Rover again connected to Arduino.  I guess the 3DR radios would simply be connected to the Uno TX/RX pins and provide the necessary serial link, with enough bandwith for simple serial control with commands for forward/reverse/spin, stop etc.  I also want to send telemetry data from GPS, Sharp IR sensors, baramoter back from rover onboard to base station for dashboard display.  Any problems forseen so far?

For the live onboard camera stream I may go with an FPV solution like the Immersion RC vtx/vrx 2,4Ghz systems used on the likes of rc planes and quad copters, I would just need to capture the rx composite output with a USB capture device and hopefully be able to forward stream that to the raspberry webserverfrom the base station laptop.

Here is a picture of the rover platform so far, based on the Dagu Wild Thumper 6WD chassis.  Many thanks in advance for any and all comments/advice, much appreciated. :)