The video system is all from Misumi Electronics. They don't have prices on the site; you have to ask for quotes (I think they don't really intend to sell to hobbyists, but they will sell quantities of 1 if you ask. Allow a few weeks to finalize the order and get it shipped from Taiwan, though. Plus around $20 shipping.) The video camera I used was a CCD camera and was around $40; they have CMOS color cameras for $25. I haven't used the CMOS camera, so I don't know if there's a real difference. The camera outputs a standard video signal, just like a VCR, so you can hook it up to anything that takes a video signal. I used a video transmitter and receiver from the same company. The pair is around $90, and transmits for a long distance, like a quarter mile. The transmitter takes the TV signal from the camera, and the receiver outputs the signal. I use a video capture card to watch the video on my PC. The transmitter also takes an audio signal, so I put a microphone on the robot too.
Data Radios.
The commands get from the computer to the robot through the Maxstream XCite OEM RF Module. It's $40, so $80 for a pair. You just power them both with 5V, and when you send serial data into one, it comes out the other one. The radios are 2-way (though I only sent data one way). They're really easy to use. The only thing I had to do was use a MAX232 chip to convert computer serial port voltages into standard 5V circuit voltages for the transmitting radio. (There's information about that in any online tutorial about talking to PICs through a serial port. You'll want to read those if you try something like this, as it's really easy to make mistakes and have nothing work. ComTester is a useful program if you're trying to get serial communications to work. The website seems to be down, so here's a link to it on my server: COMtester.exe).
My computer program is just a modification of the DirectX demo from Microsoft that demonstrates how to get mouse input.
