Mobile Camera Device 2

[TheJon]

I have a business need to supply camera devices to a mobile workforce to take photos of plant items in the field for simple editing / annotation and transmission via GPRS.

I have come up with a solution which uses a wired webcam into the existing Panasonic Toughbook CF18, but our IT manager is not happy with this as a long-term solution.
I need to meet these simple criteria:

[ul]
[li]Simple to use (these are blue collar workers)[/li]
[li]Simple process (no fiddling with flash cards)[/li]
[li]Low resolution (VGA) images suitable for quick / cheap transmission over GPRS[/li]
[/ul]

Is there anyone who has implemented something for their mobile workforce? Any practical ideas about bluetooth devices? Replacement of the toughbook is not an option.

Any information you can supply would be gratefully received.

Thanks,


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[wahnula]

This is one option, a WiFi camera that can communicate with either the Toughbook or its WAP over WiFi:

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=6433&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=10597

You can set the resolution on each camera to the lowest acceptable resolution. Not 100% sure this will meet your needs but it is a new product, and I have zero experience with this or any remote imaging system.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[vacunita]

I had to implement something similar a while back. Camera cell phones where starting to be full force in the cell market. So we decided in buying 5 cell phones to give to our mobile force. Of course a small course on how to use the phone was given to the force. It worked fairly nicely. They would take a picture with the camera phone and send it over the Cell service to a Cell Phone / base if you will that would receive the photos. It was then just a matter of hooking up that phone to a computer in the office and transferring the pictures.

Back then it was a little expensive to get the phones and the service, but the powers that be had no problem in forking over the dough. Today camera phones are a dime a dozen, so it may be a good alternative.


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[TheJon]

Thanks everyone, that has given me some good information to go on.



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