XBee Signal vs Wireless Camera Signal... FIGHT!

[sonicdh]

So I've built this little rover. It's basically an HPI E10 RC car (uses servos and ESC), a wireless 2.45 ghz camera mounted to a pan/tilt servo assembly, and an arduino all duct taped together. It worked wonderfully with a USB tether to control the arduino with. So I decided to make it completely wireless and bought the basic Xbee stuff. Soldered the xbee stuff all nice and connected it to the breadboard on the rover. I tested it with the camera off and it worked perfectly with minimal effort.

Then I plugged the camera into it's battery.

Problem. Over a span of ten feet, there was enough apparent packet loss that I could not control the rover in any capacity.

Is there any way to make this work? Or am I pretty well screwed?

[adafruit_support_bill]

You might try experimenting with the relative positions & orientations of the two antennae to minimize the interference.

[sonicdh]

Well, the camera is as big as the Xbee unit itself (the antennas are also similarly sized) and, due to the size of the rover, they're positions relative to each other really can't be helped. Looking at the manual for the camera, it says it's operating frequency is actually between 2.414ghz and 2.468ghz. I changed the channel on he xbee's, which helped the problem, but I'm going to test it out at a longer range.