Image Capturing Bird Feeder

Step 4 Adjusting Camera Parameters

If your photos are have columns or rows of what looks like corrupted data but is an otherwise clear image, it probably means that there was a problem reading out the data from the camera.  Because we are going to be using the serial port of the wireless connection, we need to use the NewSoftSerial library already used by the LinkSprite example code. 

Ideally, we would like to read out data as quickly as possible.  While the NewSoftSerial library is great and does a lot to ensure accuracy at high baud rates, it is still not quite perfect and can lead to corrupted bytes here and there.  But even so, since the image is 13KB several incorrect bytes is usually tolerable.

The default baud rate of the LinkSprite is 38400.  I played things safe and lowered the baud rate to 9600.  The hex values which must be issued to the camera t o change the baud rate are: {0x56, 0x00, 0x24,0x03, 0x01,XX,XX}.  Replacing the last two bytes "XX,XX" with "0xAE,0xC8" sets the baud at 9600.  For other baud rates and info, please consult the LinkSprite manual.

To see how to change baud rates, please download the Arduino code at the end of this instructable.