16x16 is absurdly easy for a Uno to put onto a screen. That really is the right way to go.
You keep saying "photograph" when we've consistently said that you can't put that many bytes of data through an Arduino. What seems easy for a digital camera or a phone to send megapixels around the sky is actually 3rd-level alien technology. You can't get there from here.
Going with the pre-made 433MHz modules seems like the best way. You can tell the radio guys that you thought about building your own radio but proving that it was FCC compliant was too time consuming. That's the way they will actually work anyway. Their radio-frequency front-ends are redesigned once every 10 years or less often, no mater how the technology behind changes.
I'm looking at a lot of tutorials online to display bits on the screen, as in a 16x16 bit representation of 1's and 0's in some form. All of the tutorials include an sd card which is plugged into the lcd screen.
My current path I'm trying to go about doing this, is by writing a matrix of 1's and 0's into my Uno's code, which will be hooked up to the transmitter, and this matrix of 1's and 0's is what will be sent to the data pin of the transmitter.
The Elegoo Mega which I have will be hooked up to the LCD screen, and the receiver. It will receive the data, and my question is how is this data going to be rendered onto the LCD? Are there methods to do this?
how is this data going to be rendered onto the LCD?
You will need to consult the data sheet and/or software library for the LCD display. Most have either programmable characters that you define, or a bit (pixel) on/off function.
The BMP file format completely describes pictures including color depth. The format is public info, look it up.
If I have an SD card with a BMP file I could easily read 1 byte, transmit it, read the next, etc until end of file. There NO need to store the image in RAM, the file gets sent as it is read..
If I have a receiver reading those bytes with a pixel-addressable display to output data on then I really only need to store the parts of the header needed to translate the file bytes one pixel at a time and plot it on the display. There NO need to store the image in RAM, the pixels get plotted as it is read, the display holds the image.
I won't say this will be fast. It won't. There may be a need for the receiver to get 1 byte and send back a signal before the sending unit sends the next one, look up communications handshaking.
If the sending unit ran a scanner then the SD card wouldn't be needed, the image would be stored on the picture scanned. Back in the 80's I've seen amateur scanners made from dot matrix printers with crude (ballpoint pen barrel and light detector, only sees through the little opening) sensor replacing the print head. GoodWill or Craig's List or a recycle place might have something to turn into a scanner but that alone would probably qualify as a project --- maybe you can someone dependable to science fair that up and both show ability to cooperate?
Don't use C++ Strings.
