Time Lapse - over one year

[StevieBee]

A client requires a time lapse video of a construction project over a 12 month period. Just a single camera is all that's needed and I'm thinking GoPro or similar. The site where the camera is located has power so no worries on having keep changing the battery. Never done this before so a couple of questions if anyone knows....

1) Is there a way to record the frames only during daylight hours?
2) Is there a way to automatically upload / download the frames/clips as it goes (daily or weekly) - to save me or someone having to go and check it too regularly

[Simpo Two]

I did something very like this to cover the construction of a new landfill site 30 years ago...! Hence this answer will be no use to you, but I used four SLRs in two bespoke housings (each housing had one camera set to wide angle and one to slight telephoto). One housing was at ground level, the other up a scaffold tower. The shutters were operated physically by a relay powered by a car battery and actuated by a specially-built timer set to fire once an hour for 12 hours each day. Every three days muggins drove up to change the films, and got them processed into 35mm slides. The project lasted for three months. Then it was off to a studio where each slide was projected onto a screen and filmed for a few seconds. Finally all the video clips were edited into a 90 second programme. Add captions and music and that's it!

The profit paid for my first Jaguar

How you'd do it with modern tech I have no idea

[malks222]

I have a gopro and you can set the parameters of a timelapse, so should be able to take pictures whenever you want.

you’re problem is going to be power/ uploading the pictures. power can be the overcome by using external power banks (not sure how long these would last unfortunately) or if you can get it hooked up to mains, just run it off a usb cable/ plug.

as for uploading the images, yes the gopro can upload to the gopro ‘cloud’ system, but it needs wifi to do that automatically (if you don’t have power im assuming you don’t have wifi!) so then you’ll need to go to the camera every so often, connect a mobile to download the pictures/ files to the mobile/ upload to the cloud.

sorry for the long post that prob doesn’t offer a simple solution, it is possible by gopro, but may need to look at alternatives as it’s still a bit labour intensive

[karma mechanic]

Could you plug in an old mobile in order to create a WiFi hotspot? It would need a sim card and air time, but only has one job. Would probably have to check it periodically though.

[Peanut Gallery]

A long time ago I watched a YouTube by JeffHK, he sets up a time lapse film from container ships.

If I remember correctly, he used cellphones, the wireless charging to charge, and the USB to store the pictures. One of his videos describes how he built the setup.

I would possibly just back all of the pics up to the cloud as there is a bit more Internet here on land than in the middle of the Atlantic...

[Craikeybaby]

A friend of mine used to work for a company that did this. They used various cameras, but the brains was always a Raspberry Pi with a cellular connection, it would trigger the camera and batch upload the files to AWS S3.