After some advice as a newbie. Im looking to setup a Raspberry Pi with a 4G Hat to remotely upload photos to the cloud (dropbox) from a solar powered DSLR camera. Im assuming not too difficult using Waveshare 4g HAT? Any suggestions?
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Hi Tony.
Good to have you with us 
A lot of people have used that waveshare before so you will probably find some code and tips online. That will give you a head start.
Interpretations of “not too difficult” depends on who is walking into this. For instance someone with basic code and networking skills will “not too difficult” there way through the build easier than someone who has never seen a USB cable before. 
I have a few questions to help us suggest something.
- Do you have any software or networking background? Not a dealbreaker but it’s helpful to know.
- How does the camera get it’s photo to the rapsberry PI. USB? HDMI recording tool?
- When the photo get’s to the raspberry pi to be uploaded what file format is it in? Uploading RAWs to a dropbox may have challenges.
- Thinking about security: will this raspberry pi, which will be connected to your personal dropbox, be accessible to anyone else but you?
- What network provider were you considering using?
- You mention your camera is solar powered, does that mean the raspberry PI is somewhere that has no access to mains?
- Are you wanting the raspberry PI to handle uploads automatically when they are received? Have you thought about how you would want to approach that? (plenty of options )
Good little starter project.
Pix 
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[quote="Pixmusix, post:2, topic:21015”]
- Do you have any software or networking background? Not a dealbreaker but it’s helpful to know.
- How does the camera get it’s photo to the rapsberry PI. USB? HDMI recording tool?
- When the photo get’s to the raspberry pi to be uploaded what file format is it in? Uploading RAWs to a dropbox may have challenges.
- Thinking about security: will this raspberry pi, which will be connected to your personal dropbox, be accessible to anyone else but you?
- What network provider were you considering using?
- You mention your camera is solar powered, does that mean the raspberry PI is somewhere that has no access to mains?
- Are you wanting the raspberry PI to handle uploads automatically when they are received? Have you thought about how you would want to approach that? (plenty of options )
[/quote]
Hey Pix. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
In answer to your questions
-
Do you have any software or networking background? Not a dealbreaker but it’s helpful to know. Yes though mostly in HTML (website builder) and assembled my own computers
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How does the camera get its photo to the rapsberry PI. USB? HDMI recording tool? USB or by using SD Card adapter ribbon. def not HDMI
-
When the photo get’s to the raspberry pi to be uploaded what file format is it in? Uploading RAWs to a dropbox may have challenges. JPG only
-
Thinking about security: will this raspberry pi, which will be connected to your personal dropbox, be accessible to anyone else but you? Possibly but im not worried about this side of things as ive done this before
-
What network provider were you considering using? Depends on location - Vodafone for metro - Telstra for country
-
You mention your camera is solar powered, does that mean the raspberry PI is somewhere that has no access to mains? Ok so this might be tricky - would need to be solar/battery powered. might need large 3000w plus battery
-
Are you wanting the raspberry PI to handle uploads automatically when they are received? Yes. This is the basics I need - camera control via usb possible later
- Have you thought about how you would want to approach that? (plenty of options ) So based on my limited research 1 solution is using gphoto2
A bit more info on the project - I need camera(s) at fixed locations for timelapsing various projects. these run from anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks. Photos are taken 30-60 sec apart using Canon DSLRs. I dont need every photo uploaded - maybe 1 every hour to monitor the camera.
Cheers
Cheers
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Hi @Tony281406, Welcome to the Forums!!!
This project should be possible and potentially simple to implement.
As I see it there are 4 main parts to getting this working.
- Image capture and download to the Pi
- Image upload to DropBox
- 4/5G connectivity.
For the First part, there are some capture tools such as Entangle that would capture and automatically download files.
For the second part, Dropbox can be installed on Debian and if you have the images save directly to a Dropbox folder its sync function should automatically take care of the upload.
For remote internet access, there are a few different ways this could be done. A Waveshare 4G HAT would work and be neat all in one package. But you can also use a Debian/Linux compatible USB LET 4/5G modem for internet access on the Pi.
2 Likes
Gotcha!
Looks like you’re on the right track.
This tutorial has been recently updated.
There are a few other threads I’ve seen that use this tool. You can find them using the forums search bar keyword 4g hat. You might like to read through those to get a flavor.
If I was tackling this I’d have two scripts, one that handles pulling data off the SD card and one that handles uploading this will allow them to run simultaneously and you will be able to make use of asynchronous code.
P.S. I really like @arons simple setup since it takes advantage of all the power Linux gives you.
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You have a solid battle plan here. Power is always a tricky one but fortunately that can come last.
What do you have currently or is this project starting from scratch?
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Ok currently we run cameras in DUMB mode for these projects. Meaning we have no way of knowing if they are working any way of remote controlling them. We have used specailist systems for longer Timelapse’s (years) but they are expensive and not ideal for these shorter projects either
And there are plenty of power options out there so yes that will came last but good to have a low power solution
Fortunately remote camera operation isn’t something new here.
We had someone attempt something similar earlier this year. They were building trail cameras. They had Raspberry Pi cameras. John here has also just finished another similar project with an ESP32 and his DSLR camera. I believe this is a follow up to this thread here where he uses a GPS to time his cameras.
If you need internet to sync your photos your on the right track with a Raspberry Pi and a 4G HAT. Each step you’ve outlined from Pix’s question is achievable its just getting started.
Let’s start with the camera side of things. Capturing images and getting them on the Pi.
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