Help me decide the list of components I need for my project

Projects General Guidance
1

I am totally new to Arduino so please excuse me if I don't yet know all the obvious things. I am looking for guidance on what all components I would need to buy to do a little project I am planning to build using Arduino.

The project I have in mind: take a picture, store it on a SD card, send it to a remote server and finally receive the confirmation from the remote server.

Little more technical details/steps:

  • A small camera attached to Arduino UNO 3 will take a picture when an object is detected by the proximity sensor (attached to the Arduino).
  • The picture can be of low resolution, no need for a high resolution one.
  • Picture will first need to be stored on an on-board SD card and then send to a remote server (somewhere on internet) via REST API POST call.
  • The response from the remote server will be a JSON document that will be processed/read and the value of one of key in the response document will be stored on SD card.

Components I already have:

  • Arduino UNO R3
  • Proximity sensor

Components I don't have and think will need to buy:

  • A small camera, to attach to Arduino
  • A SD card adapter, to attach to Arduino
  • A Wifi adapter to be able to connect to internet

Can you please help me figure out if the components I listed are all what I will need or did I miss something? Would I need any specific cable/wire/adapter to connect any of these components to Arduino, other than the standard USB A to C cable that came with the Arduino Starter Kit?

I will highly appreciate if you can tell me the exact component model (and maybe place to buy too). I have been Googling around and getting lost. For example, it seems Arduino Wifi Shield can serve both wifi and SD card need but on Arduino store it shows as retired and places like Amazon doesn't have it ein stock. Not sure what's the replacement of this shield from Arduino or if there is a better/cheaper alternative. Please note my budget is really limited so cheaper alternatives will be my first preferece (but would it to work OOTB, something I don't to spend too much time trying to configure to make it work).

Thanks you all in advance for helping me start exploring Arduino and get going with this project.

2

You want to -start- Arduino with a (for beginners) data-heavy project involving interfacing a camera, SD, wifi and sensor?

Cripes, I spent weeks on just buttons....

3

Cameras suitable for use with Arduino may give some disappointing results. They are very low resolution, only 0.3 Megapixels, and the Arduino is very slow to deal with the images. Add WiFi on top of that and the Arduino will really struggle with the processing, memory and code size required.

You may want to consider a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Pi camera module. These are very inexpensive (£10 for the Pi and £15 for the camera) and will give far superior image quality and performance.

4

And the Pi has built in wi-fi.

5

Thanks a lot PaulRB and Grumpy_Mike for your comments. I will look do this project with Raspberry Pi.