SparkFun Forums

[Plecto]

Hi. I was thinking about trying to tackle this project, but I must say that I have never tried to communicate using the GMS network nor have I connected my arduino to my camera before. The idea is to have a weather station that would gather data and take one picture and then send them off. I'm not sure if I want the data to be sent as an MMS or to a server, but I will figure that out. I have seen some GSM arduino shields and the libraries that comes with them and I must say that they look surprisingly simple. Transferring measurements (just pure text) seems trivial, but I have no idea of how to handle images :S A camera will probably transfer RAW image data using some serial interface, right? But how will this RAW data look like and how can I send it to a server so that the server knows that this is an image? I know how to save bits and bytes on an EEPROM or flash chip, but I don't know how a series of bytes can be interpreted as a certain file type. I'm also not quite sure how big these images will be. A 1080*1920 image will have 2 073 600 pixels, each pixel can be represented by one bit, each pixel can also have one of perhaps 65000 colors (16 bits) so thats 2 073 600*16=4.1MB, am I thinking correctly here?

I can handle the sensors and all that, it's just the camera and GSM I'm wondering about. My knowledge when it comes to internet protocols and servers are very limited (which is a pity) so I have no idea of what I'm getting into. Could any of you give me a brief explanation of how this works and how it can be done?