Sensorcam cameras and image registration

Our first approach to visual monitoring was the deployment of mobile phone an integrated camera. It was powered by a car battery and installed on the unknown glacier since unknown date. It kept sending one picture of the glacier every hour during daytime and stopped working after two months due to power depletion. We consider it as a successful feasibility study. Based on the experiences gathered in this first deployment, we developed Sensorcam, a more flexible camera designed to be fully autonomous. It includes a Colobri PXA270 embedded platform, a GSM radio communication module, and a solar power system as the energy source. The master board runs an embedded Linux system 2.6.26 and controls all the peripherals. Fig. 1a shows the Colobri PXA270 board, the GSM module, and the associated “glue” board. To provide power supply, we build a solar power system with a battery and a 2.4W solar panel (Fig. 1b). We deployed this solar system at an Alps mountain for more than six months. Using solar radiation data collected from the deployed system, we calculate the average energy supply during the winter period (most adverse period) from 15th Jan 2011 till 17th Mar 2011. The energy budget is listed in Table I.