I want to build a timelapse camera that sends photos over 3G/GPRS
September 19, 2013 5:17 AM Subscribe
Where/how should I start putting together a device that will take a photo at a set time everyday and send it over a mobile network to a specified location or recipients?
Click inside for all the whys and wherefores but in a nutshell this needs to take reasonably high quality photos and operate unattended in a location several hundred miles away from me for at least six months at a time (ideally indefinitely). It'll be indoors and mains power is available, I don't care about saving the photos on the device (in fact I'd rather not in order to avoid having to manage storage) and the only access to the internet is over GSM networks.
I'm working on a reasonably limited budget (ideally under £100) with more of a broad understanding than detailed knowledge of the technical concepts involved (ie electronics and programming) but I do have a fair amount of time, enthusiasm and sheer bloody mindedness on my side.
My parents are essentially impossible to buy gifts for which is why I'm worrying about their christmas presents before September's even over. Aside from having somewhat esoteric tastes they've also reached the stage in their lives/careers where they have the money to do most anything they want and buy the things that interest them. Case in point, this year they bought a cottage in a rather picturesque village 250 miles away from where they live more or less on a whim (as much as anything involving lawyers and banks and mortgages can ever be on a whim). It's a nice cottage in a nice place and they're spending a fair amount of time down there, which is nice for them, but it's horribly impractical from basically every point of view except the actual views from the cottage which are really rather picturesque.
I would like to give them a camera/device they can plug in by one of the windows that will somehow send them a photo of the view every day so they can enjoy it even when they're not there. The biggest restriction is that although there's pretty good 3G coverage there's no phone line or internet access in the cottage and there probably isn't ever going to be. They're not the most technically minded people so it needs to be something they can just plug in and leave to do its thing and I'm only going to be there once or twice a year so it needs to function with minimal on-site attention.
Essentially what I want is a cheaper, less rugged version of something like this Trail Camera or something that takes slightly higher quality photos than these 'Security' cameras and can be programmed with an intervalometer to automatically take and send the photos.
I like the idea of recycling an old mobile phone as part of this or of building something from scratch using microcontrollers (that might also feed into an idea I have about small semi-disposable digital timelapse cameras that could be left in public places for prolonged periods). I've used CHDK for camera stuff in the past and I'm considering that too although I don't know if it's the best option to connect to the GSM network. I'm also totally flexible about how the photo gets delivered, MMS will work as will email or uploading the file to dropbox or another web location or anything else you can think of and I don't mind a fair amount of fiddling around to get the photo delivered to its intended recipients every day.
I'm considering something based around this or this if I can figure out how to get them to work but I'm not wedded to anything.
Any thoughts or advice at all will be gratefully received with thanks in advance for your help.
My parents are essentially impossible to buy gifts for which is why I'm worrying about their christmas presents before September's even over. Aside from having somewhat esoteric tastes they've also reached the stage in their lives/careers where they have the money to do most anything they want and buy the things that interest them. Case in point, this year they bought a cottage in a rather picturesque village 250 miles away from where they live more or less on a whim (as much as anything involving lawyers and banks and mortgages can ever be on a whim). It's a nice cottage in a nice place and they're spending a fair amount of time down there, which is nice for them, but it's horribly impractical from basically every point of view except the actual views from the cottage which are really rather picturesque.
I would like to give them a camera/device they can plug in by one of the windows that will somehow send them a photo of the view every day so they can enjoy it even when they're not there. The biggest restriction is that although there's pretty good 3G coverage there's no phone line or internet access in the cottage and there probably isn't ever going to be. They're not the most technically minded people so it needs to be something they can just plug in and leave to do its thing and I'm only going to be there once or twice a year so it needs to function with minimal on-site attention.
Essentially what I want is a cheaper, less rugged version of something like this Trail Camera or something that takes slightly higher quality photos than these 'Security' cameras and can be programmed with an intervalometer to automatically take and send the photos.
I like the idea of recycling an old mobile phone as part of this or of building something from scratch using microcontrollers (that might also feed into an idea I have about small semi-disposable digital timelapse cameras that could be left in public places for prolonged periods). I've used CHDK for camera stuff in the past and I'm considering that too although I don't know if it's the best option to connect to the GSM network. I'm also totally flexible about how the photo gets delivered, MMS will work as will email or uploading the file to dropbox or another web location or anything else you can think of and I don't mind a fair amount of fiddling around to get the photo delivered to its intended recipients every day.
I'm considering something based around this or this if I can figure out how to get them to work but I'm not wedded to anything.
Any thoughts or advice at all will be gratefully received with thanks in advance for your help.
I'd look into fairly standard webcam stuff and just add a 3G hotspot. This has the nice advantage of adding Internet to the cabin.
posted by chairface at 5:47 AM on September 19, 2013
posted by chairface at 5:47 AM on September 19, 2013
Concur with the hotspot idea. I've done exactly this before: CHDK running on the camera, an eye-fi card in the slot, and a 3G hotspot nearby. Because it's now 2013, you'll probably end up with a 4G hotspot, but yeah, same idea. (Even if the nearby tower isn't upgraded yet, it will be soon.)
Do a lot of playing with it before deployment, particularly with autostart on the camera. It might simply be impractical to make it wake up after a power interruption, which you might just deal with, or which might point you to a different type of camera. Wifi is the universal connection, though, and the rest is details.
posted by Myself at 6:45 AM on September 19, 2013
Do a lot of playing with it before deployment, particularly with autostart on the camera. It might simply be impractical to make it wake up after a power interruption, which you might just deal with, or which might point you to a different type of camera. Wifi is the universal connection, though, and the rest is details.
posted by Myself at 6:45 AM on September 19, 2013
Best answer: Wifi webcam/cheap CHDK point-and-shoot + any £20 Android phone running a hotspot + Ovivo SIM with free 3G data. Shouldn't require too much hacking or much more than £50. Problem solved.
posted by turkeyphant at 7:24 AM on September 19, 2013
posted by turkeyphant at 7:24 AM on September 19, 2013
Response by poster: Thanks guys
Ovivo's an excellent shout, hadn't come across that before
Might try the whole thing from a cheapo android phone this time round and graduate to RasPi or Arduino with a GSM modem for v1.1
posted by VoltairePerkins at 6:07 AM on September 20, 2013
Ovivo's an excellent shout, hadn't come across that before
Might try the whole thing from a cheapo android phone this time round and graduate to RasPi or Arduino with a GSM modem for v1.1
posted by VoltairePerkins at 6:07 AM on September 20, 2013
I reckon you should add a small battery UPS to the kit. Trying to do similar hack-together always-on, unattended stuff, there is always one component that won't gracefully restart after a power glitch.
posted by bystander at 10:20 PM on September 22, 2013
posted by bystander at 10:20 PM on September 22, 2013
Response by poster: For the sake of posterity, I got this working pretty well using a slightly broken Samsung GT I5500 running Android 2.2/Froyo with a pretty amateurish python script (thanks to sl4a) triggered by TaskBomb to take a photo and send it by email over the mobile network.
I'd still like to graduate to something like RasPi or Arduino for a future version but considering the availability and price of secondhand android phones and the relative simplicity of sl4a I think there's probably more than enough mileage there to keep me interested for a fair while yet.
Thanks again all.
posted by VoltairePerkins at 4:57 AM on January 3, 2014
I'd still like to graduate to something like RasPi or Arduino for a future version but considering the availability and price of secondhand android phones and the relative simplicity of sl4a I think there's probably more than enough mileage there to keep me interested for a fair while yet.
Thanks again all.
posted by VoltairePerkins at 4:57 AM on January 3, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
Provided it's a UVC webcam, mjpg-streamer is a pretty easy way to make images available to any http client. From there you could put together a very serviceable system using cron as your intervalometer, curl to fetch the images, and mailsend to email them to your parents.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:38 AM on September 19, 2013 [1 favorite]