So I am part of an amatuer motorsports team, we do SCCA club racing events.  I haven't ever fired up one of these HSMM-MESH radios, but I'm thinking this could be a fun marriage.  We have this long endurance race that last 13 hours at Virginia International Raceway:

http://virnow.com/track/configurations/

I was thinking that we could put an IP camera in the car (any suggestions for a decent low cost IP camera?)  with a node, and then set up nodes around the track to feed back into the pits so that we can see live video from the car in the pit lane.

Does anyone have any idea how quickly the node can hop from one connection to the next.  It will, I think, based on my guesses, need at least 3 maybe 4 nodes to cover the entire course, plus the one in the car.  So the one in the car would be hopping between 4 nodes over and over, a lap time is about 2 minutes 15 seconds. 

Is that feasible? Sounds like fun to me, I'd even be interested in seeing if I can port some additional data back from the car on engine temp and so on.

In this race there is only a wooden plaque trophy to win, it is purely for fun, we for sure are not making any money on this, so I don't see any Part 97 violation here, the reason I mention that is because in the past we have run APRS from the car, and someone found me and complained to me that I was using my license for commercial purposes, I don't see it that way at all, we are just turning money into noise.  :-)

AJ4TW -> any suggestions for a decent low cost IP camera?

I bought two of the Wanscam pan and tilt brand off eBay for $50 each, but that style might not work for you in a vehicle. They do make an outside model that's around 5" long and runs off 12V, but I haven't tried it. 

I had to use the minimalistic search utility on the included mini CD first, after that I could use the web GUI to get the MAC and set the camera to DHCP.  I set up a static lease in the Mesh firmware, forwarded the port (I used 300 for one and 301 for the other) and added a link.  I was surprised at the quality, and the distance the IR LEDs would illuminate (again, not much use for your application).  The audio is a joke, and only available with IE.  I watch and control them with Firefox in Server Push mode rather than IE and ActiveX.  I'm thinking of getting another pair and putting them in my house and shop.  Wanscam apparently has it's own DDNS service.

AJ4TW -> in the past we have run APRS from the car, and someone found me and complained to me that I was using my license for commercial purposes, I don't see it that way at all, we are just turning money into noise.  :-)

Did you have an advertisement in your beacon comment?

AJ4TW -> I'm also not a huge fan of ActiveX, so it will be interesting to see how you are doing that, might have to get a few more details on that from you.

When you log in to the camera it gives you the option of using either IE, Firefox/Chrome or Mobile.  Here's some screenshots that might make it clearer.

AJ4TW -> I guess since they saw that we were racing at the race track near their house they assumed we were pro racing?

There's always someone wanting to be an "Amateur Observer" in every mode. 

OT - I run a high-level APRS Digi/IGate 250' on the University's tower and I've had ops running 4 hops and such I try to be nice and educate to the suggested paths, but if you were running the minimum path to get to an IGate (assuming you were wanting to be seen on the APRS-IS) at a standard smart beacon rate (no more than every 3 minutes when over 60mph) I'd consider you in line.  If you were beaconing more often than every 3 miles to get your tracking more granular on the maps, yeah, you could be considered a lid, but it would be for excessive beaconing and clogging the network, not because it was assumed you were using the Amateur bands for commercial use.  The safe bet in that situation is to not use the WIDEn-N path at all, that way the local infrastructure wouldn't react to you.  You could still monitor direct locally, and you could set up your own IGate to get your info to aprs.fi.   We used a path of CAVEn-N with WB4APR and his Mammouth Cave tests earlier this year.  You could use a path of RACE1-1 just as easily.

AJ4TW -> Sucess! I have video through the nodes! this is pretty darn fun.

<chuckle> Having a blast myself.  I just set up three $18 Encore ENHWI-1AN42 Wifi routers in AP mode and using one to watch and control the PT of my Mesh cams with my iPod.

FreePBX and phones coming up!

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Roger  KJ4AJP