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currently making low-cost and low-powered tree cameras that will hang from Atlanta-area fruit trees and send us once-a-week tree photos. The idea is that we ca
by durkie 10y ago
currently making low-cost and low-powered tree cameras that will hang from Atlanta-area fruit trees and send us once-a-week tree photos.
The idea is that we can hang them in trees all over the metro area and keep an eye on when they ripen. This is mostly powered by the Twilio programmable data service and the Ai-Thinker A20 (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DIYmall-ESP8266-A20-Wifi-GPRS-Module-Adapter-Board-Camera-ESP8285-SMS-Voice-Wireless-Quad-band-GSM/32785870839.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DIYmall-ESP8266-A20-Wifi-GPR...) -- WiFi and 2G cell radio for $14!
We can likely get battery life in the range of several months, so we can put the sensors up at the beginning of the season and then take them down when we harvest.
- mistermann 10y agoWhat kind of a cell plan (and pricing) do you use for this?
- durkie 10y agoCurrently we're using Twilio Programmable Data. $2/month/sim and then $1 / megabyte. I think we can get by with 640x480 photos, but that's what we'll be experimenting with this season.
- owenversteeg 10y agoI was thinking of doing something similar actually! That looks pretty cool. Do you know roughly how big the images that the camera takes are slash do you happen to have any example images? I have a few more questions that I can't think of at the moment, but I'd be happy to give you a hand with any battery-related stuff (a specialty of mine) if you'd like! My email's in my profile, feel free to reach out even if you don't have any battery questions yet.
- durkie 10y agoHaven't received this camera yet, but it advertises as 0.3MP, which I assume is 640x480 (640x480 = 307,200). We might have to play some with camera placement too in order to actually get relevant images. I'll drop you a line!