Surveyor SRV-1 bot monitors your home on the cheap

If you have one of those floors that need very close monitoring throughout the day, the Surveyor SRV-1 is the robot for you. The little unit can crawl around your home at around one foot per second, and reports back on its surroundings with a miniature VGA camera. A 100 meter range Zigbee 802.15.4 wireless receiver is included to let the SRV-1 stream its findings to your computer and up onto the web, and you can control and monitor the bot with any major operating system or via a web browser. If you don't feel like taking manual control of SRV-1, he can do fine by himself driving around, navigating obstacles, and even communicating with others of his kind via IR. The best news is the price: at $375 for the bot, the charger and the wireless base station, SRV-1 shouldn't break the bank, and seems ready to provide some good times for the robot hobbyist within us all.

[lettcco @ May 26th 2006 7:01AM]

I am in if they would attach freakin laser beam to it also

[SugarDaddy @ May 26th 2006 8:31AM]

For no extra charge, it will scare the sh*t out of your cat or dog.

[Gordy @ May 26th 2006 8:43AM]

Speaking of dogs, do they intend to cover up those wires? Seems a bit incomplete. My dog would have a field day with it, yanking the wires out and tackling it from the side.

[Howard Gordon @ May 26th 2006 9:53AM]

Thanks for the comments. We have 4 large dogs (one weighs 185 lbs), and the dogs tend to ignore the robots, generally running away if they get too close. The wires in the production units are actually a bit better tucked away than what's shown in that photo, but Fido (or in our case, Tank) could do some damage if he decided to smack the robot around, so we'd suggest some caution if dog-sitting is the primary application.

[Steve @ May 26th 2006 11:27AM]

Can it be configured to use your excisting Airport (802.11b or g)?

[Jake @ May 26th 2006 11:54AM]

It would be awesome if there was a dock that these could return to to recharge like the Roomba vac. 4 hours of battery isn't much.

[Howard Gordon @ May 26th 2006 12:22PM]

Steve - the SRV-1 uses 802.15.4 rather than 802.11 for base-to-robot communication, so it won't connect to your existing Wi-fi. The IEEE 802.15.4 "Zigbee" standard was developed for relatively low bandwidth, low power sensor networks, and has the advantage of a very simple interface with minimal host software. We experimented with a variety of radio networks (including Bluetooth), before choosing this path. You can get more information about the Zigbee standard from http://www.zigbee.org - it's a very interesting piece of radio technology.

[Richard Lerssen @ May 26th 2006 12:37PM]

speaking of dogs, I have a male Chihuahua who thinks he has to mark everything as his territory. How well does the little fella stand up to moisture. Might also like to know how fast can it travel, type of terrain it can manuver on, and what kind of weather conditions it can handle, if it can be used outdoors or not. Yeah, a laser would be nice also.

[psc @ May 26th 2006 1:52PM]

If you dump a couple of solar cells on this thing could you run it all day outside?

[Matt @ May 26th 2006 2:20PM]

I was wondering, since most cats and dogs are too lazy to chase mice -- thanks to what we feed them -- could these bots be trained to spot and kill mice?

[Howard Gordon @ May 26th 2006 4:56PM]

PSC - that's a cool idea. The average current draw for the robot is about 200mA @ 7.2VDC. I took a quick look in the Jameco catalog, and a 10" x 6" (250mm x 150mm) panel will produce that level of output. The robot itself is only 5" x 4", so there'd be some overhang, but it's probably manageable, or perhaps there are some higher efficiency modules around. The only other detail is that you'd really need a charge management circuit (Maxim makes suitable chips), and the solar module output would actually need to be in the 8-9VDC range in order to charge the 7.2V Li-ion pack.

[Howard Gordon @ May 26th 2006 6:33PM]

I just noticed that new comments keep popping up ahead of my answers, probably because of the way this site validates comments. So my apologies for seeming to answer questions out of order....

Richard - the robot is designed for indoor operation, and definitely isn't moisture-proof. However, it can handle varied terrain. Here's a short Quicktime clip (1.2MB) showing the robot climbing a 40-degree + incline - http://www.surveyor.com/images/srv1-trackbase1.mov

Jake - we're definitely looking at recharging station ideas, and we hope to eventually offer a contact-free charge pad. We've discussed this concept with Splashpower (http://www.splashpower.com ), but they're not yet ready to ship product.

Lettco - no lasers, but we did experiment with an AirSoft gun off a radio-controlled tank. It's definitely doable, though this isn't an option we plan to offer. If you're into that sort of thing, check out http://www.rctankcombat.com/tanks/

[Bob F @ Jul 22nd 2006 12:30PM]

Very informative information Howard. I'm very interested in picking up one of your robots, but I'm just a poor college student. I'll be emailing you soon with some more questions about the robot. Keep up the great work!

[Mario Gamez @ Aug 9th 2006 11:51PM]

i just bought one of your robots... directly from surveyor.com

added DHL shipping for hopefully faster shipping then ground :)

[Ed N @ Aug 11th 2006 3:11PM]

I just got one of these a week or two ago. It's pretty impressive and I am learning alot. I tried to recompile the firmware loader for Mac OS X but, to no avail; it won't successfully load the latest firmware. Hopefully, in the next version of the Java console, there will be a way to update the firmware.

On a modding wishlist note, I want to try putting LED headlights and maybe a microphone on there. Also, maybe 90 and 180 degree turn buttons on the console.

I wish I could post these comments on the official journal. Keep up the good work!

[PalMediC @ Aug 31st 2006 8:29AM]

Howard - I think that there's no need to go all the way to splashpower. You can design a recharge ramp, the robot will climb on and have his metal connector touch the metal connectors in the ramp.
I didn't get my robot yet, but I'll sure try to understand if an IR guidance beam emitted from the charging ramp is an option.

Keep the good work.

[Ed N @ Sep 4th 2006 4:28AM]

Yay forums! http://www.surveyor.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl