Send daily picture

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello,

I have a project which consist in send a daily picture of a remote area which is only covered by 3G. The idea it to program a schedule each day to take a picture and then send me a MMS (or it could be also on a dropbox or any website).

So, as I never make such a project, I need some advices.

For the moment, I found:

The advantage of this one is there is already a camera included.

  • to use the previous shield, a Arduino Mega2560

  • a SD card to store the picture before sending

  • a battery

  • a 3G key

Do you think it could work?

Do I need to buy an antenna in addition?

2

It could work very well but

  1. should it work unsupervised?

  2. for how long period?

  3. how many pictures are taken per day?

  4. do you need the picture to be taken at the same time?
    (RTC needed? or light sensor?)

  5. do you want to take more pictures during the day and only send one?
    (store the others on SD card to be picked up whe batteries are changed?)

  6. do you consider local energy harvesting (solar or other)

  7. are there moving parts or does the camera always head in the same direction?

3

Hello robtillaart,

  1. The system needs to work by itself without any intervention, the idea is to monitor a remote place without going there.

  2. I want to test this prototype during two months at least, without changed the battery

  3. and 4) I need one picture a day, took at the same time each day. I did not know what RTC was until now but as a result I think I need one to adjust the time I need to take the picture (I think in the begin of the afternoon).

  4. I want to be able to receive the daily picture on my phone/computer without going on the place the hardware is. The picture have to be taken and directly sent to me (maybe a SD card is not needed for that?), it is not important if it takes 1 hour to receive it.

  5. For what I need (one picture a day), I thought a solar panel will not be needed for two month test, but if it is needed, I can also use solar panel.

  6. In order to have enough autonomy, the camera will not move but just head in the same direction (the final project would have an autonomy of one year so I do not want energy consuming system)