Conservation, hackspaces and Raspberry Pis. And sharks. How
could this not be the blog of the day? Gary Fletcher of ZSL sent
us this report. Marine Conservation Camera ZSL have developed
low cost cameras to monitor marine biodiversity in large marine
protected areas (MPAs) using the $35 Raspberry Pi single board
computers and standard webcams and running opensource Motion
tracking software. ZSL reached out to UK hackspaces to help
design the cameras and achieved unprecedented economy and
features. Why Raspberry Pi? Traditionally it has been incredibly
difficult to capture events underwater – all of the usual
apparatus such as PIR/heat, infrared and ultrasonic sensors
simply do not work underwater. The Raspberry Pi literally opened
up a new door with its low power consumption and processing
power. It allowed us to deploy a solution which really fits the
bill and without it would have been very troublesome to achieve!
Each camera was deployed on an anchored buoy. Mounted directly
onto the buoys were two solar p