The XCam2 Rover

September 4, 2001 - One of the most amazing things that NASA ever did was take a remote controlled car, hook a camera to it, and send it 35 million miles into space, to the planet Mars, and then drive it around on the planet’s surface giving us a fresh new look at Mars. While humanity could never survive the elements on the planet Mars, (at least not yet) the Sojourner could. So while it was up there, NASA could control it by remote control, while it gave Earth the most incredible pictures it had ever seen. That is, before it finally broke down only a few weeks after it landed and NASA lost contact with it.

Mark Welch decided it would be interesting to experiment by mounting his own wireless camera on a wheeled ’rover’ vehicle. So the first thing he did was buy a radio-controlled Nikko Jeep Wrangler. Second, he set up the XCam2 to his 13-inch television. Next, he experimented with several ways to set up the ’Rover’ until he finally came up with an adaptation he really liked. For this alteration, he removed the body and front bumper from the vehicle, and left just the basic housing. "The idea was to reduce weight since I would be adding the camera and the battery pack," Mark said.

From there, Mark broke a 26-inch piece from a 3/4-inch square wooden board. After smoothing the sharp end of the board, Mark screwed it onto the top of the vehicle chassis, using the screw-holes left when he removed the Jeep body. As Mark put it, "Since the body was held in place with three screws, the board was at an angle; since the top of the chassis was not level, the board also rose up at the front (which is what I wanted, to raise the camera a bit for a better view).

"The result," as Mark says, "while quite odd-looking, worked quite well. I was able to send it down the sidewalk, turn it around, and bring it back up the sidewalk to my front door.

While Mark tested the tele-rover in each configuration he could think of, navigating it up and down his sidewalk and driveway, he said, "I certainly felt like I was operating a device that was on Mars. It certainly seemed as if the rover was farther away than the actual 15 to 30 feet." *

Mark had done it. He had built his own Mars Rover. "It feels like a Martian Rover," Mark says. But he’s not done yet. Like the people at NASA, Mark is just beginning. From here he’s going to continue to "tweak" his design, work with it more, and keep on flushing it out so that his "Mars Rover" makes NASA’s rover look like a toy.

That’s the X10 way, reaching for the stars.

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*X10 wireless cameras can transmit video up to 100 feet from the Video Receiver.