I am looking to design a remote trail camera with some sensors that can send data via a 4G network to a remote server. I was going to start with an Arduino Uno, LTE Cat M1/NB but was looking for any further recommendations or considerations for hardware.
Also, for sending a picture over the 4G, I have not had a lot of success in finding support guidance. This seems somewhat routine and I was hoping there were some pre-existing scripts already made.
Any help would be appreciated.
-Jason
Hi Jason,
The only cellular-capable development boards/platforms we currently have are going to be the[LTE Cat M1/NB-IoT Shield and the [Particle Electron. Both use the same SARA-R4 module from u-blox. The SARA-R4 works great for SMS and narrowband IoT applications and our [Arduino Library for the LTE Cat M1/NB-IoT helps you get started with those applications but I am not sure if these will work well for sending images via a cellular network. u-blox’s [documentation page for the SARA-R4 would be the best source if you wanted to research more about this module to see if it will work for your trail camera project.
Also, the Uno does not really have the processing power to really work well as a camera application. What may be a better option would be to use a more powerful controller like a [Pi Zero W with a [Pi Camera (note, you need a specific [ribbon cable to use it with the Pi Zero). That will speed up development time to get photos processed for your camera. From there, you would need a way to send the image data via a cellular network and I’m afraid we do not have any good recommendations but you may be able to find one with some searching on [Raspberry Pi’s Forums or just a general search.
I hope this helps point you in the right direction for this project. It is a bit beyond our scope here but if you have any other questions about this project, let us know and we would be happy to help as much as we can.](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14272)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14028)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14277)](SARA-R4 series)](GitHub - sparkfun/SparkFun_LTE_Shield_Arduino_Library: Arduino Library for the SparkFun LTE Cat M1/NB-IoT Shield.)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14211)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14997)