Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

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Andrew
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Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Andrew »

Picked up one of these little beauties earlier. A raspberry Pi 3 model b for £36

I had a version 1 but it died when i decided to put it to use :sad:

The plan was a wild life cam then an underwater cam and now both! The unit has wifi so i intend to set it up as a wifi hotspot start a cam server and dial in to it by connecting phones wifi to the raspberry and access the feed via the phones browser (already partly working, slow frame rate though)

It can easily be set to just record motion as a wildlife cam or constant stream for under water.

Something else i found briefly are people using cheap transducers on em for depth finding!!! (Thats a project for later)

Oh and kodi too

I went in to my odds and ends box and found an old cctv camera. I intend to remove the camera from it as the Pi doesnt have analog input and replace it with the usb webcam and hopefuly repurpose the infra red lights that are already in it and get it sealed up so its water proof.

Not bad for a powerful wee £36 computer as the other bits ive picked up along the way for free :smile:
Screenshot_20171121-170211.jpg
I might have to upgrade the webcam at a later date its not the best quality but it will do as a proof of concept.
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Re: New project - underwater/wildlife camera and echo sounder in 1

Post by delboy »

Aint got a clue what you are talking about bot i know i want one.I wonder if you can help me please,As soon as i go to reply to anything,in the box at the top it comes up NOT SECURE
Nothing wrong with me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Its everyone else.
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Andrew
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Re: New project - underwater/wildlife camera and echo sounder in 1

Post by Andrew »

You only want it cause its called a raspberry pi :laughs:

Didnt know there had been replies here. Unsecure thing been sorted :wink:

Still trying to setup the camera streaming. I had it going but it was waaay too laggy loke 5 second delay in the stream so trying something different.
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Re: New project - underwater/wildlife camera and echo sounder in 1

Post by skov »

Interesting! I recently purchased a raspberry pi zero w for a fishing related project. Hadn't considered adding an underwater camera to it. I'd be keen to see how you get on with that.
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Re: New project - underwater/wildlife camera and echo sounder in 1

Post by Andrew »

skov wrote: Fri Nov 24 2017 19:25 -
Interesting! I recently purchased a raspberry pi zero w for a fishing related project. Hadn't considered adding an underwater camera to it. I'd be keen to see how you get on with that.
Ive been running raspbian for the os. I found something called Motion that streamed to a browser but noticed it was filling the card with jpeg images.

The top dog appears to be a program called UV4L. There are two things note, if your using a generic usb camera you want to look in to UV4L-uvc.

The pi 3 has its own camera module that connects via ribbon cable close to the Pi itself, dont know if the pi zero does :scratch: In that case you need to look in to UV4L-raspicam.

Im sticking with a usb camera even though raspicam would probably be the better option as a cam. all thats going to be underwater is the usb cam on an extension cable. The Pi ill have in housing above water.
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Andrew »

The experiment is going well.

Ive sinced move away from the full raspbian OS in favour of this http://www.linux-projects.org/rpi-video ... e-demo-os/

it still uses the UV4l package I was talking about earlier although the guys have created a whole slimmed down OS for it (rasbian, so security updates will be easy to obtain). There is no graphical interface, only command line but its all ready to go almost out of the box.. its brought the lag down a good bit enough that it is watchable.

the above OS also has a package called Janus Gateway which I intend on removing from the OS as ive no need for it but all the UV4l stuff has been pre setup rather nicely and is usb webcam and raspicam ready.

I skipped the setup instructions for passwords and ssl, I'll do that last once I know if this is the option ill be choosing.

oddly though it has to be connected via ethernet cable at first which I find odd.

this is all I done from the setup guide:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install firmware-brcm80211 wireless-tools
this downloads the wifi drivers.

after that I headed for http://device_ip:8080 and there it was live stream on my phones browser (works with vlc media player but the lag is even worse)

I think though when I put this to use ill be getting the raspicam module(1080p!), usb cam just does not cut it, there is no hardware processing going on which is why im getting the lag, a h.264 usb camera might be better.. I found there are ways to extend the raspicamera away from the board using a converter for the ribbon cable there are two option, HDMI cable with converter or cat5 cable and converter.

ill be going with the cat5 cable I think as its cheaper than hdmi cable and ive got hundreds of feet of the stuff.
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Bob Watson »

:shrug: :knife: :question: :confused:

I'm glad you know what you're on about :wink:
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

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:dizzy:
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Andrew »

Took a break from getting the underwater camera side of things until i decide to get hd camera module and installed kodi.

Dont have a remote but found a web interface setting, happy days. i browse to the ip address and there it is an interface for the addons and an onscreen remote.
Screenshot_20171202-160743.png
Handles the new kodi quite well after allocating it mire ram and gpu. Did get some lockups during setup but its calmed down now im using it normally.
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

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Been working on a web browser interface of my own for controlling all these. keyboard, mouse, and shell client is a pain in the a**e :hissy:

if anyones interested :lol: , ive settled on apache and php running on the Pi using named pipes that picks up data sent to a fifo running in a python script. with this I can load my programs, kodi for example or start the webcam streaming, then make my own onscreen remote control that works across the board as the chorus 2 only works on kodi when its running and its s**t (buttons too small for touch screen)

making slow but good progress :woot:
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Andrew »

Interesting discovery, the message "hdmi cec enabled" kept popping up when kodi was turned on. Ignored it for a while but thought id google it now. Turns out it allows data to be sent over hdmi while its plugged in to the tv meaning you can use the tellies own remote to control kodi on the pi.

Had to enable the setting on the tv before it would work. Not all tv's call it "hdmi cec" btw.
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by andrew_nagel »

My IT guy built a replica first gen Nintendo SNES with a Raspberry Pi and installed all the early games on it. Nice.
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Andrew »

andrew_nagel wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 01:14 -
My IT guy built a replica first gen Nintendo SNES with a Raspberry Pi and installed all the early games on it. Nice.
Seen one put in a gameboy too full of retro games :grin:
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

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andrew_nagel wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 01:14 -
My IT guy built a replica first gen Nintendo SNES with a Raspberry Pi and installed all the early games on it. Nice.
Could he do me Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum? :wink: Now that would be retro!!
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Andrew »

Bob Watson wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 14:05 -
andrew_nagel wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 01:14 -
My IT guy built a replica first gen Nintendo SNES with a Raspberry Pi and installed all the early games on it. Nice.
Could he do me Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum? :wink: Now that would be retro!!
Yep

https://blog.hackster.io/a-beautiful-ra ... 9deb2020ab
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Bob Watson »

Andrew Croft wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 14:16 -
Bob Watson wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 14:05 -
andrew_nagel wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 01:14 -
My IT guy built a replica first gen Nintendo SNES with a Raspberry Pi and installed all the early games on it. Nice.
Could he do me Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum? :wink: Now that would be retro!!
Yep

https://blog.hackster.io/a-beautiful-ra ... 9deb2020ab

:thumbs:
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Re: Diy raspberry pi underwater camera

Post by Tomcox77 »

Bob Watson wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 14:05 -
andrew_nagel wrote: Fri Jan 05 2018 01:14 -
My IT guy built a replica first gen Nintendo SNES with a Raspberry Pi and installed all the early games on it. Nice.
Could he do me Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum? :wink: Now that would be retro!!
Great game...used to sit patiently waiting for the tape player to stop schreechin and finally load the game!
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