How do I automatically take HD scenery pictures at our old house, transmit them to our new house, and display them on our HD TV?

August 8, 2009 4:47 PM

How do I automatically take HD scenery pictures at our old house, transmit them to our new house, and display them on our HD TV?

For more than 10 years, we have been waking up to gorgeous lake and mountain views. We are now moving out of the family house, and going to live in the city. But my wife wants to take her scenery and her ducks and birds and boat views with her visually day-by-day. We can park a camera at the family house, and internet access is there. We are not looking for continuous video due to the bandwidth, but maybe one frame every couple minutes. Then transmit the frame, receive the frame at the city house, and display it on a 60 inch HD display.

It would be a big plus to be able to zoom or pan, but just a crystal clear still shot is all that I feel I need to do.

What camera/lens system will take stunning long-distance HD scenery views?

How do I transmit/receive the pictures automatically?

How do I display one frame continuously until the next one comes in, and make the frame transition non-distracting?

Is zoom and pan viable?

Can I do all of this for under $1000 in equipment costs and still get great pictures? If not, how much?

posted by 925 to computers & internet (10 comments total)

A lot of wireless webcams can be set to take a picture every 30 seconds, offer pan and zoom, and have a built in server so you connect to it without a computer running in the house. I don't have time to find one for you but that should get you looking in the right direction.
posted by travis08 at 5:44 PM on August 8

I would move away from moving the camera, and focus on quality. You'll never get a webcam setup to give you a stunning view. Find a decent Digital SLR camera that can be tethered to a computer and fired in timed increments. Think a Canon Rebel, no need to go crazy with it. Once you have a decent camera, a basic computer, no real horsepower needed, there are tons of webcam software packages for uploading pictures to a site automatically, or run it from the computer directly. I'll do a little more research, but you could easily get the whole thing running for under a grand.
posted by shinynewnick at 6:39 PM on August 8

Also, because you don't actually need it to be live, you could do a very cool time lapse effect of the last couple of hours to give you a sense of slow movement.
posted by shinynewnick at 6:41 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]

I don't think you need that great of a camera. HD is at most 1080 vertical resolution--even the cheapest point and shoot you buy can give you reasonably good pictures at that resolution. Get a decent point and shoot, set it up on a tripod, tether it to your pc using a regular USB cable and most of the time you can use existing webcam software with it.

SLRs would be good, but if you want a picture every couple of minutes you're looking at lets say 30 pictures an hour, 720 pictures a day, 21600 pictures a month, 259,200 pictures a year. Considering the average Rebel is rated for AT MOST 100,000 shutter actuations, you'll be lucky to have a working camera at the end of the year. With a point and shoot, you won't have that problem because you don't have to worry about mirror and shutter curtains going up and down with each shot. If you do go the SLR route though, get the extended warranty at least--like time lapse guys, you'll be one of the few who will definitely make use of the warranty.
posted by reformedjerk at 7:04 PM on August 8

This sounds like a pretty fascinating project!

I'm with reformedjerk, you can probably get by with a good point and shoot, for reasons he mentioned (although shutter life could be extended by shutting everything off after dusk). Since you are shooting from a distance you probably want a superzoom like a Canon SX series camera. Webcams generally have crap picture quality for stills and even the good ones won't able to zoom out as far as you need.

Since you are shooting from a distance, you'll probably want a rock solid tripod or at least something very solid to mount the camera on since it's not going to be moved around. It also wouldn't hurt to get a camera with image stabilization.

You might also need a computer to tether the camera to and to process/upload the pictures to the internet.

Check out CHDK http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK which is some interesting software that you can load on a camera to customize the behavior and for adding the tethering feature. You'll probably need someone with some programming expertise to set this up for you, although it should be pretty easy for someone with moderate programming experience.

Another option is to get an Eye-Fi, which is a small Wi-Fi adapter built into an SD card. It is designed to automatically wirelessly upload pictures from a camera to a web site. However, I don't think is easy to set one up to shoot on a timer.
posted by kenliu at 10:24 PM on August 8

It also wouldn't be terribly hard or expensive to build some kind of a computer controlled motor system, but you'd need someone with the right skills to build it for you.
posted by kenliu at 10:27 PM on August 8

Mike Davidson is writing about the process of building a house in Seattle at A House By The Park, and in a recent post he detailed setting up a remote camera to take periodic shots of the building site. The post is here: Setting up the construction time lapse, and although it's not an identical project to what you're describing I think there's a lot of technical information there you might find very useful.
posted by impluvium at 11:55 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]

If you want a cheap solution, get a Canon Powershot that can be flashed with the CHDK firmware and use a program like PSRemote to automate taking of pictures.

You'll need a PC on the remote end hooked up to the camera via USB. You could automatically take pictures, resize them and upload the images to a web server.
posted by wongcorgi at 1:23 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]

I'm very impressed with the responses so far - thanks for the ideas! But I am still taking input...

The House By The Park is a similar view and a few miles from the view I am talking about, so you can get the idea of what we are giving up by moving to a place without a view. I still have to check out this site.

I really appreciate knowing that SLRs will wear out in this application. That was one direction I was considering, and now I know that direction is flawed. The Canon point-and-shoot is easy for me.

I am going to give up on panning for now. If I decide I need it, I'll add it later after the project is functioning. If I don't start small enough, I might never get it done.

Eye-Fi is a really fun idea, but I can't figure out whether it would all work in real time, and what would trip the shutter.

wongcorgi's comment immediately before this one is the best so far. I hope I am technically strong enough to pull this off. I need some help... but from WHERE?

Thanks again! I'll post more later, and keep those ideas flowing.
posted by 925 at 2:11 PM on August 10

If you don't know any software developers, then you might want to try to hire one. There are quite a few services (RentACoder, Guru.com, eLance, etc.) where you can submit a project and consultants will bid on the work. I believe that most of the companies doing the bidding are from India and do the work really cheap. YMMV with this, but it's an option to consider.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001190.html
posted by kenliu at 8:22 AM on August 14