Hey,
thanks for the quick and good answers!
First of all some intel about the project. The idea is to build two climate stations, one "near"Ilirney (lake) - Wikipedia and one "near" Khamra - Wikipedia. The spots will be reached by helicopter just once and we return after one year to collect the data. At each of these spots should also be a time lapse camera that takes a foto of a measurment pole and/or the station itself to evaluate the snowfall and depths. This will be a high cost Campbell product. Furthermore it would be nice to have "low cost" options that could be placed nears those spots to cover the overall change. This is where i would like to use a DIY Arduino TLC.
robtillaart:
Is it an option to have the camera in an isolated box that opens when photo's need to be taken?
I dont think so, because most movable parts tend to freeze. Thus wind as a power source is also a to unreliable option.
Considering the time sync problem, i thought of a GPS that gets booted once a day to connect and thus get the time. I dont know if there is sufficient reception to send and recieve SMS. The "circadean" clock idea is really nice, but unfortunately one spot is north of the polar circle so there will be multiple weeks without sunlight at all and poor solar radiation around that period. So sadly solar power is neither an option. Maybe to keep the batteries loaded long enough to survive fully charged the polar night.
robtillaart:
Place a small mirror in the system so that every photo is a "selfie of all the equipment". It helps to see how the equipment behaves and if it failes somehow you might have a visual log (sort of fisheye mirror).
Good idea! But i am not so sure if the mirror wont freeze/be covered in snow (this could happen to the camera to). Furthermore the resolution will probably not high enough, to "cut of" valuable image size. A Fisheye camera would be a good solution i think.
It is always a trade of either the whole system drains to much energy or you dont get your desired accuracies....
I am quite new to the arduino world, i just have experience with the raspberry so i dont know if it is really possible to build a TLC that needs not so much energy.
jremington:
I certainly would not trust hobby shop modules for long term research projects expected to operate under harsh environmental conditions. Glacier researchers would be a good source of information on time lapse equipment.
Do you have something specific in mind? Most Glacier time lapse shots, as far as i know, are either operated with a connection to the power supply network or be located insided the polar circles to be powered via solar.
The "Hobby"-solution is considered because i hope it wont drain so much energey and is more cost efficient. The general concern is:
What happens when there will be short periods with no energy supply due to voltage drop? Are those board wiped if this happens? I am not so sure how they manage their intern time control, like the featherboard e.g.
Greetings
Johannes