Long Range Remote Control

[RobZ]

Hi all,
a friend has asked me for advice to remotely control access to his
Farm.
the Gate is 2km from the house, he wants video (gate -> house)
intercom (bidirectional) and non-latching output to the electric gate
motor circuitry
the Gate motor is powered by 12V charged by Solar Cells

possible solution i thought of was an embedded uPC running a web-cam
and a form of VOIP for communications and the gate being driven from
the uPC parallel port, all of this communicating to house via
802.11(x).
this will require the house side to be controled by either another uPC
or a normal PC

although this will work, does anyone out there have a better /
simpler / off-the-shelf solution?
thanks in advance
Rob Zeilinga

 

[Tom Biasi]

Hi all,
a friend has asked me for advice to remotely control access to his
Farm.
the Gate is 2km from the house, he wants video (gate -> house)
intercom (bidirectional) and non-latching output to the electric gate
motor circuitry
the Gate motor is powered by 12V charged by Solar Cells

possible solution i thought of was an embedded uPC running a web-cam
and a form of VOIP for communications and the gate being driven from
the uPC parallel port, all of this communicating to house via
802.11(x).
this will require the house side to be controled by either another uPC
or a normal PC

although this will work, does anyone out there have a better /
simpler / off-the-shelf solution?
thanks in advance
Rob Zeilinga

Do you have line of sight to the house?
Or perhaps a repeater. Its a long range link situation anyway.

 

[Yukio YANO]

Hi all,
a friend has asked me for advice to remotely control access to his
Farm.
the Gate is 2km from the house, he wants video (gate -> house)
intercom (bidirectional) and non-latching output to the electric gate
motor circuitry
the Gate motor is powered by 12V charged by Solar Cells

possible solution i thought of was an embedded uPC running a web-cam
and a form of VOIP for communications and the gate being driven from
the uPC parallel port, all of this communicating to house via
802.11(x).
this will require the house side to be controled by either another uPC
or a normal PC

although this will work, does anyone out there have a better /
simpler / off-the-shelf solution?
thanks in advance
Rob Zeilinga

Use Cell phone technology and Touchtone tech to send commands over the
audio link. All available OFF the Shelf !
Yukio YANO

 

[John]

Hi all,
a friend has asked me for advice to remotely control access to his
Farm.
the Gate is 2km from the house, he wants video (gate -> house)
intercom (bidirectional) and non-latching output to the electric gate
motor circuitry
the Gate motor is powered by 12V charged by Solar Cells

possible solution i thought of was an embedded uPC running a web-cam
and a form of VOIP for communications and the gate being driven from
the uPC parallel port, all of this communicating to house via
802.11(x).
this will require the house side to be controled by either another uPC
or a normal PC

although this will work, does anyone out there have a better /
simpler / off-the-shelf solution?
thanks in advance
Rob Zeilinga

There are TV cameras with built-in WiFi. Since this is a fixed
installation, you could use directional antennas on each end (search
wok + antenna on google) to get the required range. At 2km, this is
probably a line-of-sight only solution.

Is there an equivalent of the "citizens band" radio service in your
country? If so, a unit mounted in a secure, weather-tight box and
powered by the 12v used for the gate motor might work. You might want
to add a "press to call" button that actually turns on the radio and
starts a timer that will turn the radio off a minute or two after the
last transmission to reduce the battery drain.

You could add a tone detector to the audio output of the radio at the
gate, so that a specific tone (or tone sequence) would activate a
relay briefly to open/close the gate.

John