To measure water levels from remote cites using a narrowband channel, this paper developed a difference image based JPEG communication scheme and a water level measurement scheme using the sparsely sampled images in time domain. In the slave system located in the field, the images are compressed using JPEG after changed to difference images, among which in a period of data collection those showing larger changes are sampled and transmitted. To measure the water level from the images received in the master system which may contain noises caused by various sources, the averaging scheme and Gaussian filter are used to reduce the noise effects and the Y axis profile of an edge image is used to read the water level. Considering the wild condition of the field, a simplified camera calibration scheme is also introduced. The implemented slave system was installed at a river and its performance has been tested with the data collected for a month.