Photos and Imagery...

[Bogus Exception]

I have a friend who has a mailbox on the road that they can not see from their house. They know someone is messing with their mail, but cannot get any info.
How can I throw something together to capture & transmit (vs. store) imagery?
I'm all over the arduino, motion/reed switching, and even radio transmission. I'm really stuck on how/what to use to capture the imagery and put it in a format for transmission.
I have a plain NTSC Video camera and web-cams at my disposal, but the house is about 1000' away, and there is no A/C at the mailbbox (but there is a perfectly situated telephone pole!)...
Ideas?

[gohan]

there are webcams with internal SD storage that can be set to record on motion detect and hide it somewhere. Maybe you could start by installing one of those fake surveillance cameras on the pole with some kind of fake/plausible solar panel and see if that is acting as deterrent. Then if they see that the messing around continues then you have to do some real recording. There is no way you can extend wireless over to that point?

[dbemowsk]

The cameras that @gohan mentions are sold as hunting cams, trail cams or deer cams. They all have motion sensing, and many have IR night vision. Some can even be set to record video clips when motion is sensed. I think that is your best bet.

[mfalkvidd]

I agree. Some can send images and video as MMS (if there is cellular coverage).

Something similar to these http://www.ebay.com/itm/720P-10MP-IR-Night-Vision-Wildlife-Hunting-Camera-Trail-Security-Stealth-Photo-/172577980944
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HC-300M-Hunting-Trail-Digital-IR-HD-Camera-Scouting-Infrared-Video-MMS-GPRS-GSM-/321727939906

[wallyllama]

I think telephone lines have 6v ac... :wink:

[gohan]

Until they ring where they go around 80-90v if I remember correctly

[Bogus Exception]

Thanks guys for the responses. I think I may need to stick with nothing real time, but somehow record the images, then drive up to the pole and trigger a download from the SD card via RF.

Just too many damning restrictions.