Hi, I know only a little about boards or programming but I am willing to really put in the time and learn. I need some help to get me going in the right direction.
Project:
I would like to build a system that records video. This system will be located inside the collar of a large animal to capture video from the perspective of the animal. To do this I will need to build the system as small as possible and add/use as much battery power and memory to record video for as possible. I was thinking of using the Iphone 4s 8mp HD camera module because of the high video quality and small size of the camera module. The collar which the camera sits inside will be placed on the animal in the evening and will need to record starting in the morning around 7am (put on a timer to start recording ?14 hours after deployment)for as long as continuously possible (until the memory or battery runs out). Video will be downloaded upon recovery of the collar. It doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to work.
I have the collar, access to the animal when collared and access to the animal to get the collar back, I need to build the system and put it in the collar. I am good a wiring and soldering and I will do what I have to do to learn and make this project work successfully. Any comments on approaching/solving this problem would be much appreciated. I am open to any suggestions and thank you for your time.
I thought the Arduino might be able to tell the camera module to turn on after a certain amount of time and I was looking for something that could take the signal from the camera module and write it onto flash memory or an SD card. I don't need everything extra that comes with the iPhone and takes up space/battery power, if I can just use the video camera parts-I was hoping I could build a smaller and more efficient system. Can someone give me advice of how to take the iPhone camera module or similar small video camera module and design a system similar to what I described in my initial post. If not the Adruino board then what and how? Thanks for your replies.
The arduino may be able to turn the camera module on, but without the iPhone's Arm processor and memory and ASICs, the camera is just going to be a slightly warm battery load.
Phone cameras are pretty dumb.
I thought the Arduino might be able to tell the camera module to turn on after a certain amount of time
yes an arduino can do that
and I was looking for something that could take the signal from the camera module and write it onto flash memory or an SD card.
No there is no way an arduino could do that, simply not fast enough and doesn't have enough memory.
If not the Adruino board then what and how?
I am not at all sure you can do this with a system as small as you need it to be. Certainly it is not a beginners project, I would say it is best to try and hack something that is close to this already.
I am not at all sure you can do this with a system as small as you need it to be. Certainly it is not a beginners project, I would say it is best to try and hack something that is close to this already.
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I don't have to use the iPhone camera, I just thought because it's small, has nice video, and is easy to get a hold of it would work well. I know the Arduino doesn't have the memory I need, but I was looking/hoping could write the video to an external source like an SD card or hard drive. Is there anything you would suggest to hack that has been done before? I have been building and hacking wildlife cameras with PIR sensors so I do have some tech savviness, but the cameras I use are normal digital cameras and are to big for the job. If you had to pick a camera/system to do this, where would you look to learn how to do this? Are there any other projects similar to this that your aware of? This has been done before, but the current systems are to expensive for me, and I would like to learn how to do this.
but I was looking/hoping could write the video to an external source like an SD card or hard drive.
Sorry but it is simply not fast enough to keep up. You can only write to SD cards in bursts and you have to buffer the data in RAM so you can cope with the bursty nature of the card access.
Is there anything you would suggest to hack that has been done before?
I have seen some products in so called spy shops that do covert surveillance equipment.
What you could do is break apart a small keychain camera (like the "808") and interface an Arduino to it via the existing buttons. For an example of how to simulate keypresses you can look at this example with an MP3 player.
Thank-you for the advice and the ideas. I really appreciate all the help and I will definitely look into the suggestions. I will probably start out with some of the ideas mentioned here and then try to work my way up to more complicated methods. If I did want to take idea of using the iPhone camera to build a small video camera, where you suggest I start? Are there other types of forums I should explore? I acknowledge the difficulty in this process, but I figure I have to start somewhere.
