Photo Uploader

Hello everyone, here's my project. I'd like to use Arduino as an SD card reader that upload photos on a web service, like Dropbox, over a Bluetooth or an USB connection to a smartphone. The user puts the SD card in the SD shield, then connects Arduino to its smartphone to choose files he wants to upload and selecting the right available options. I really don't care about performances of this system, that's just an experiment. It would be great to make kinda standard interface to navigate into an SD file system using a smartphone.
Anyone wanna tell something about it? Wanna help? Wanna tell me i'm a fool? Has anyone already done something like this? Is it as difficult as finding a girl in an italian engineering college?

Wrong again KE7!
The Arduino can easily talk to a mobile phone. All the work is done. Depends on the mobile phone:
http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/programming/interfacing-arduino-to-a-cellular-phone
That will be the easy part if you have the right phone.

The hard part will be interfacing to Dropbox since they don't have an Arduino library.
Choose an easier alternative.
Start with reading the SD card?

Wrong again KE7!

Wrong about what? :wink:

You have to read the next line after the one you quoted to find out.

Oh wait. Why not just buy a mobile phone for $20 that has an SD slot? Then you can do what you asked!

sbright33:
Oh wait. Why not just buy a mobile phone for $20 that has an SD slot? Then you can do what you asked!

Can a Phone read "normal" SDcard? No, usually smartphones can only read microSD card, so here's why I'm trying to design this kind of device.
I was thinking about a person in vacation, in his hotel room, connected to the hotel WiFi network with his smartphone. He has taken a lot of photos and wants to upload them directly from his room, without using a laptop. He could connect this device to the smartphone, then browse the file system in the SD card of his camera, then select and upload the best photos and finally format the card to get more space for more photos or video.

sbright33:
Start with reading the SD card?

Yes that would be useful to create first a standard interface for "normal" SDcards file browsing over a smartphone. Then the interface could be used for other systems. The objective is to create this kinda standard interface for a mobile phone to browse external flash memories, then the applications would only depend on the smartphone's software. So you're right, maybe the card reader is the best thing to do first.

Any advice for the best mobile operating system to develop for? Would it be hard on iOS?

Let's put on our thinking hats. Buy a microSD card with a bigger adapter (SD) so it'll fit into the camera. Then you can put it into the phone also. If the pictures were in the right folder, you can browse them on the phone, and send them using Wifi. Some phones will browse to any folder. Sounds like the perfect solution to me. Why is it not popular to use? Because people are using PC's to view the pictures before sending, or something like this:
http://www.digitalfoci.com/photo_safe.html

The most popular solution is to buy more than one 32GB card. This should hold enough still images from even a long holiday for a light packer. Our mobile phone solution would only be useful for someone traveling light, who wants to share the photos immediately. They are making tiny PC's today.

Video, on the other hand, needs a useful product to copy the files daily. It's hard to beat a cheap PC with a big drive.

That would be a solution but my interest is not to make something to sell. I am just looking for fun, so it's not important to me to re-innovate sd cards market. I just wanna hack, ok? :wink:
Then, i am still looking for an appropriate reply from anyone who knows the starting point to create a Phone interface to browse sd cards using Arduino.

First try to browse the SD card using the Arduino language. Maybe using Openlog hardware? What good would a phone interface be if you can't complete the first step?

Ok let's try it first, then, do you think it would be easier to make an interface for Android OS? Would it be hard to do it on an iOS device?

This website, not just the page, will get you started with the Android.
http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/programming/android-adk-terminal-emulator-for-arduino

As you probably know, you won't get very far unless your "customers" jailbreak their iPhone. You'd have to write your own App, obviously. I have not seen a library to interface the 2 together. This works great for me:
http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/152

But it is not what you're looking for.

Quote
Wrong again KE7!

Wrong about what?

You have to read the next line after the one you quoted to find out.

I have read the next line and I cant see what you are on about.

He said:-

I don't remember anyone coming around here recently claiming great success in that area.

So you posted a page where someone had done something similar. He didn't say it couldn't be done, he said he didn't remember anyone claiming success.

So why was he wrong. You seem to be dissing him for no reason.

You also don't seem to be helping the OP very much either.

So why was he wrong. You seem to be dissing him for no reason.

You can read below to see the wingnut factor involved. :wink:

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,73379.0.html

There is an iOS application in the app store which can drive Arduino over an ethernet connection. Well, it's not what was i looking for but maybe it would be good to watch it.