# DIY remote trail cam or surveillance with a Raspberry Pi and camera and cellular network for access.



## MannDude (Apr 22, 2015)

No, this is not a guide. All I have right now is an idea and (a lot of) questions.

Idea: Raspberry Pi powered "trail cam" like device that can be powered by solar and use a cellular network to upload images to Dropbox or similar online service or remote server or send them as a SMS attachment or email. This would be for monitoring a remote area/property, whether five miles or five thousand miles away.

The solar stuff isn't that complicated and I can wrap my head around that for the most part. Reviewing some documentation and guides for the Raspberry Pi camera module, that doesn't look like rocket science either.

What I am having trouble wrapping my head around is how to access this data once it is created when I may be far away from the device, and the device itself would be in an area that is outside of wireless range to connect to a WiFi network and not in a practical location to manually retrieve the data from an SD card. Thus,  I want to be able to upload this data so I can access it remotely.

That leaves the GSM module idea. They exist already for the Pi, such things sell on Amazon (example: http://www.amazon.com/SainSmart-SIM900-Function-Adapter-Raspberry/dp/B00INJZSL6) however I am not sure at all if this would work for this idea. The RaspberryPi would need to be able to upload those images to a remote source that I could access directly (Like a VPS, dropbox, email, etc).

So, any ideas on how one would go about achieving this? I'd imagine that cellular networks are very restrictive on things.

This is not anything mission critical, but the idea came to me and sounded like a fun challenge. I do actually have a practical application for it and I think others would too, but for now just want to tinker.


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## trewq (Apr 22, 2015)

You can just plug a USB mobile broadband dongle onto the Pi. They don't use much power and you generally set it up once and it's good to go. Apart from the billing obviously.


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## MannDude (Apr 22, 2015)

trewq said:


> You can just plug a USB mobile broadband dongle onto the Pi. They don't use much power and you generally set it up once and it's good to go. Apart from the billing obviously.


Good idea, I hadn't considered that an option. May be easier to setup the networkign that way too.


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## trewq (Apr 22, 2015)

MannDude said:


> Good idea, I hadn't considered that an option. May be easier to setup the networkign that way too.


Yep, mobile data in the US is cheap too. I would imagine it will be behind a NAT so I would setup a Tinc private networking with multiple connection points. That way you could even SSH into your pi!


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## drmike (Apr 22, 2015)

These GSM and related cell modules are neat, but their prices are high and well, technical as all get out to string a solution together.

Most efficient thing would be a USB cellular modem.  They also make portable units that spit out wifi and connect to cell network.  Nice thing about the portable units is a number of them can tether via USB also.  Plus they often pack external antenna ports.  External antennas and amps are the norm when you get super rural in crap coverage areas.

Odds are you might do well with PTP wifi though with someone nearby.   Gives you extra eyes and person in loop remotely - if there are folks line of site in say 2+ miles.  Can do more than that with wifi obviously and on the cheap ($200~ for two ends).


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