I was recently the subject of a photo shoot featuring a "Pillcam SB2". This is a gizmo the size and shape of a large pill; it contains a color camera which takes two photos per second, a radio transmitter, and 8 hours worth of battery -- total weight under 4 grams. See
I retrieved the camera (don't ask) and would like to have some fun with it. These are considered single-use items, but I'll bet if I pry the sucker open and replace the battery I can make it go for another 8 hours. Seems like it might be neat to hang under one of those $25 micro helicopters. Plus they make another pill that does 18fps -- maybe they use the same controller for both, and just change a jumper...
In normal use, they stick a bunch of patches on you. Each patch contains a circular antenna about 2" in diameter. The maximum distance from the pill to an antenna is probably around 18 inches. I'm hoping a larger RX antenna might be able to gather enough signal to allow a range of maybe 25 feet. I'd be able to play with the antenna on the TX side as well -- I'll bet 11mm doesn't allow for an optimum transmit antenna in the pill.
Problem is, I have no idea how to receive the images from my new toy. Assuming QVGA with 75% compression, 2fps is almost a megabit/sec. I don't think Zigbee has that kind of bandwidth and Bluetooth is probably too power-hungry. So I'm guessing some kind of custom transmitter...? Does anybody know what kind of receiver is necessary to pull in the pictures? I don't have access to an RF lab so I kinda need to have an idea what I'm looking for. The manufacturer's site is not very Hardware Hacker-friendly :-/ The FAQ is all medical stuff, go figure.