Camera and pressure housing

Our project is based on the FishCam underwater camera design that we published a few years ago. So, the first step for us is to gather all the parts to recreate a FishCam. Then, we will work on adding audio capabilities to it.

For the pressure housing we went with the Blue Robotics 4" enclosure with a clear acrylic dome for the camera. It is a bit more expensive than the custom-made PVC enclosure we built before, but is more reliable and also saves us some time (so we can focus more on the electronics side of things). The end cap has five M10 holes which will allow us to add wet-link penetrators for the hydrophones. As per the original design, we will still use a Raspberry Pi single-board computer to control the instrument. Of course because of the supply chain crisis, it was a bit of a challenge to find one at a decent price. Thankfully, using the amazing rpilocator website, we managed to buy a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Raspberry Pi 4 from official vendors.

Since our original FishCam design, the Raspberry Pi cameras have evolved quite a bit and we can now use higher quality camera sensors at an even lower price than before! We purchased one Camera Module 3 Wide and one Camera Module 3 Wide Noir to test if it works better in low light conditions. Both have 12MP resolution and a 120 degree wide angle lens.

We will put everything together in the coming weeks and then tackle the audio component of the project (which is the most challenging).