cmos camera, low power consumption

How about adding more external storage? Replace the batteries with some sort of adapter to an external plug and add external storage. Then your only limited by what you can carry in.

Robert

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They take many cameras in with them, and they need to carry theyre supplies along with the cameras, so weight becomes an issue ( along with cost ).

How small does it have to be ?

mobotix.com ip camera - m22

• inverter and decent sized sla

camera can be powered from 30V 45mA (wall wart)

Are weatherproof

The mobotix cameras can take jpegs or stream images also have a microphone builtin and can record sound or be triggered from sound. The new ones have the ability to store to cf as well as storing 64MB of images internally. Can connect other sensors / trigger via serial/usb. Can turn themselves on and off via time tasks.

Probably wouldn't want the standard lens as its usually to wide an angle.

Cameras from trigger themselves using motion detection (ir or video window).

Can even hook them up to an access point and use them as a webcam in a couple of minutes.

I believe there are a coup,e of mobotix partners that can supply a complete system with solar panels and wireless AP, ready to roll.

Very easy to capture images from and c

At work we are using these cameras for car park mangement systems and bridge monitoring with license plate recognition.

You can find quite a few of the mobotic cameras on the web

penguin cam in antartica

http://217.24.53.18/ http://81.75.78.45/

Alex

Consumer DSCs mostly have quite a long wakeup time. There are a _few_ that wake up very quickly, but it's quite a challenging application. What is the cost target for this device?

Since you only want a small quantity, a hand-rolled solution seems best. I would suggest using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5 camera in a waterproof housing. In order to get your desired battery life, you would remove the LCD from the camera, and use an external circuit to switch the camera on and off (and provide the +3V it requires). Your estimated BOM for such a lash-up would probably be in the neighborhood of $300 per camera.

(Note: Simply keeping your IR beam alive with a 100% duty cycle is pretty greedy over three weeks. The game cameras used by hunters for this application use a PIR sensor, I believe).

By the way:

there are a couple of cameras here that accept an external 12V battery kit and have most/all of the features you need.

Hmm, Cost is less likely an issue than weight. You could probably run off pretty close to the leakage current of a decent lead acid battery, you'd want to have someting to trundle it in on though.

Any chance of using solar cells as a supplement? Might not be cheap enough though.

Robert

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The IR beam would be the largest current drain. A PIR sensor would probably be better.

I built a "Game Camera" for a friend. I modified an X-10 wireless motion sensor and a film camera to photograph day or night. The 2 AA cells in the camera and 2 AAA cells in the motion sensor would run for months or until the film ran out. You can now buy "Game Cameras" for less than $100 at Wal-Mart.

It would be easy to modify a cheap digital camera to operate with the motion sensor. Most digital cameras are fired by a simple switch closure to ground. The other problem with most digital cameras is that they shut down after a short period of inaction. It would have to be activated again before a photo can be taken.

The mod to the motion sensor was the addition of another PIC12C509 on top of the existing PIC. The addition sensed the output to the RF section and pulled the contact in the camera to ground for 1 second. I added a delay of

3 minutes between shots. The delay eliminates the second RF message from firing the camera again one minute later. The camera mod was just bringing the "shutter" button contacts out.

Don

This might be worth a serious look :

Essentially a digital camera in module form that you can get control over with a microcontroller. You should be able to control this more ieasily than a ready made camera as it has a documented interface.

If it really needs to be a beam, then you should be able to use a pretty low duty cycle - e.g. a

100us pulse once per second, with detector wakeup time would probably avarage something like 50uA.

a microcontroller.

has a documented

duty cycle - e.g. a

something like 50uA.

Thanks to everyone for your input and excellent suggestions. Both converting an existing camera and the camera module seem like they are worth pursuing, and from everyones response it seems that the concept is feasible.

My next step is to actually build a prototype, can you recommend any literature or website which will help me figure out the pieces I need (I'm not an electrical engineer)?.

Thanks for all the help so far. Sal Polifemo

with a microcontroller.

it has a documented

duty cycle - e.g. a

avarage something like 50uA.

I started looking at some of the sites mentioned in this thread and I think I'm starting to get an idea of what I need. What are you opinions on the following starting configuration CMOS camera: C328-7640 from

SD storage: DOSONACHIP with a 512MB media card Microcontroller: ??

I'm not sure which microcontroller to choose, I'm assuming it needs 2 serial channels and some memory to store the image while its copying it from the camera to storage. I see that the various chips are programmed in assembler, visual basic, and others. Is the programming language of the chip something to consider? I already know how to program in C,

Again, thanks for your input. Sal Polifemo

By the time you buy the camera module, the DosOnChip module and build a microcontroller module and then add a PIR sensor, you could buy a Game Camera much cheaper. Check out the Wildview or Game Watcher. They are less than $100.

Don

messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com...

build a

The wildview camera is worth a closer look, I forwarded the info to the group to get theyre comments.

I still want to go forward with the prototype, looking at this long term there are possibilities for image recognition applications and this would be a good foundation for that.

I'm interested in you opinions on which microcontroller to choose, for the moment I'm only interested in copying the image from the camera module to the SD storage device.

Again thanks for the help.