Remote webcam over cell network?

[a9249]

Here's a strange request for anyone in the know. 

I have been tasked to set up monitoring stations, that take images at 10 minute intervals... in the middle of nowhere. These stations are in northern canada at the far extents of the cell network. Ideally I would like a webcam all in one solution that can automatically take an imagine and transmit. I've looked into trail or critter cams, but they appear to only be motion sensor activated. So my question is this: are there any that someone knows is capable of a time-lapse mode (take interval photo->transmit). Will be hooking up to a 12v battery bank and solar system. Before I go and take the time to construct a fleet of super complex razpi, I'd like to know if there's a simple plug and play option. 

Thanks guys! 

[KNG_HOLDY]

just googleing "time lapse camera with sim card" gave me multiple hits

https://tbox-timelapse.com/titan2-remote-timelapse-camera/

 

if it should be cheap & you want to build it yourself i would look at pi or arduino 

i would use an ardunio or pi and any camera that is compatible & fits your use case 

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/ArduinoGSMShield to transmite the data

 

i think gsm has low frequency so the speed is very slow but the coverage should be good - if you just need so send 1 picture per 10 minute i could be smart enought - i didnt do the math because i dont know the resolution of the image

but im not sure if they have gsm in canada, im sure that america has another mobile communication system then most of the rest of the world - but i dont know about canada

but im sure that  you can buy another shield for 3g / 4g ...

 

 

 

 

 

[WereCatf]

34 minutes ago, KNG_HOLDY said:

i would use an ardunio or pi and any camera that is compatible & fits your use case

An RPi or similar is a far better choice than Arduino for a project like this. For one, RPi has a LOT more RAM to work with. Secondly, you only need a couple of lines of shell-code to grab an image off of a camera and transmit to an SSH- or SFTP-server. Updating the script or even adding new functionality can also be done really easily completely remotely, like e.g. if OP decides that they want to do some processing on the images before transmitting them over.

[mariushm]

yeah... also you can send a low quality image and keep a high res image locally and every few hours or every day you could encode a video using x264 or hevc from those hires images and slowly send it through the slow link... the encoder will take advantage of similarities between pictures to compress everything very well, much better than sending each pic separately.

if not a pi, you can look up some 12v powered atom or amd geode boards on ebay or whatever and use python in windows or whatever to grab frames from camera..

 

ex.. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Motherboard-FSC-Fujitsu-Futro-S400-12-V-CPU-AMD-1000mhz-Geode-Nx1500-Needs-12v/273819228705

 

asrock has lots of 12v or 19v+/-5% powered stuff.