I have it on good authority that SQUEEEEE is the sound of pure internet joy. I take it that you must also bring your hands up near your chest and wiggle them around while saying it.

Today I received my distinctive red box from SparkFun that signified that my order was here. This makes me a happy, happy camper. Again, I’ve gotta give SparkFun kudos for their quick shipping.

So, to repeat myself (’cause I’m not a great blogger who updates stuff daily…), the project is to create a device for my motorcycle that integrates a GPS, with display, and a camera. The idea is to take pictures either at a set time or distance interval. The original idea was to use a cheap-o off the shelf digital camera. However, my camera died. Instead of buying a new digital camera, I decided to purchase a camera “break-out” board that integrated a small camera sensor and lens. That cut the cost to less than half what I’d expect to pay for a new full digital camera.

The project is based on the Arduino platform, and follows the ideas presented by the JARV.org geotagger project. Well, it didn’t start that way, but why reinvent the wheel AND the car…

Anyway, on to what I received from SparkFun today.

The smallest item in that photograph is the Arduino Pro Mini. I’m working on the project right now using the largest one on the left, the Arduino Duemilanove. However, ultimately I’ll be moving it to the Mini. This will save me some space. Given the limited space of my motorcycle’s handlebar, all space is at a premium. The width of the project is now dictated by the width of my GPS, which is slimmer than the Duemilanove. It’s not a big space savings, but I’ll take all I can get.

I was absolutely amazed at the size of this camera. As a friend pointed out, I shouldn’t be so in awe, given the size of cameras in cell phones these days, but I can’t help it. It’s so freakin’ cute and small. John from JARV.org did suggest I stick with an off the shelf digital camera, noting this is pretty much hobby-grade. I tend to agree. While this is a nifty piece of kit, you focus it by screwing in and out a small lens. That lens, as is, is mighty loose. For what it is, the lens is pretty decent quality. I just don’t trust it to maintain focus on bumpy, unpaved roads. If I do use it, I’ll have to find some – non-destructive – way of holding focus.

This is the microSD card breakout board from SparkFun. I know I’m repeating myself again, but how small storage has become makes me giddy. Two gigs on a chip the size of my thumbnail? Awesome! Makes me wonder where we’ll be in another few years. Anyway, this will store the images after the GPS data has been inserted into the IPTC headers of the image.

And this is everything, together. Just about everything I’ll need for the project is right here. All that’s missing are the connections from piece to piece.

To follow the path of what’s happening – The GPS provides a visual at all times, even when not in use by this project. Currently powered by a pair of AA batteries, but possibly by motorcycle battery later. The GPS is attached to a signal conversion board taking its RS232 signal and converting it to TTL and sending it to the Arduino.

The Arduino, in turn, is connected to both the camera and the microSD card. At specific times (or distances) the Arduino will be programmed to activated the camera, take an image, grab the GPS data and inject specific fields into the image data. That image data, then, will be stored to the microSD card. Everything then goes back in to waiting mode until that predetermined time or distance occurs again. Loop until done or until the microSD card is full (or stuff that currently run on batteries drains them…)

Right now, as shown in the picture, the Arduino is powered off a polymer lithium ion battery. I’d rather power everything from the motorcycle, which should have 6 volts to supply. I’ll tackle that later (motorcycle is currently frozen up at -20F outside my apartment. ).

So, now that everything is here, I can start getting this all put together and programmed! Yay!

As Greg pointed out in a comment to my last post someone has worked on a project similar to mine. I have to say, their solutions are much more elegant than my own. So, in the spirit of design, I’m gonna totally steal a bunch of their ideas. The use of a dedicated camera breakout board will simplify my project tremendously. I’ve postponed working on that part of the project for two reasons. One – my camera died and I hadn’t bought a new one yet. Two – I really had no idea how I was going to accomplish turning on the camera, focusing and then taking a picture. I had a kludgey idea of using servos, but that was overly complex. Another idea was to find a bluetooth enabled camera, but that would likely be spendy.

The JPEG Color Camera breakout board from SparkFun eliminates this problem. The only downside is that the images will be of a lower resolution than an “off the shelf” digital camera. For this project, that’s a compromise I’m willing to make. And the fun of these breakout boards is that should a better camera come along, it should be relatively easy to replace.

There are two other aspects of the JARV.org project I’m going to utilize. First, since size is a concern in my project, I’m going to switch to the Arduino Pro Mini, a smaller version of the microcontroller that I’ve been using. Additionally, I’ll be switching from the SD card format to the microSD format using this microSD breakout board, also from SparkFun. I still get a kick out of how small data storage has physically become in the past decade. That you can fit several gigs worth of data on something no bigger than my fingernail is amazing to me.

Since I still want the display from my eTrex Garmin, I will be retaining its use, so the work I’ve done so far is still valid. I’ll still need the conversion circuit, but I can get rid of the bulky GPS datalogger shield I’ve been trying to get to work. Let’s face it, with essential tremor anything I have to solder is suspect. I’m happy I got the conversion circuit working, but I still can’t figure out where I failed on the datalogger. Everything I’ve ordered now has been prebuilt. No more relying on my crappy soldering.

One other aspect of the JARV project really sold me on their design. The JARV project injects the GPS data directly into the EXIF data of the images. I was going to simply tie images with a text file that corresponded to each image. I expect roughly 600 images from my trip up the Dalton Highway this summer. That’s a lot of images to cross-reference with GPS data. If the data is already tied to the images in the EXIF data, a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of time will be saved.

Placed the parts order yesterday. Oddly, it seems every time I order something from SparkFun, I do it right at a holiday. Despite that, they’ve always done a really good job getting things here quickly, doubly impressive since it seems like it takes forever for anyone else to send stuff to Alaska.

I want to thank Greg for pointing me towards the JARV project and John at JARV for paving an easy to follow path.