Open Ocean Camera

This is the code for Open Ocean Camera hardware. This repository includes the scripts required for setting up the Raspberry Pi as well as the essential code-base required for operation of the camera and the communication with the mobile application.

Development Setup

First time setup

Update system packages

Make sure that all apt packages are already up-to-date

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Mounting the USB storage device on boot

The OOCAM uses external storage device connected via USB in order to function. However, to mount ExFAT filesystems it requires additional packages to be installed.

To install the required packages, use:

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse
sudo apt-get install exfat-utils

Now, if the mount point /media/pi/OPENOCEANCA does not already exist, create it:

sudo mkdir /media/pi

To enable mounting the USB during boot, edit the file /etc/fstab:

sudo vim /etc/fstab

Add the mount point configuration in a new line:

LABEL=OOCAM   /media/pi/OPENOCEANCA   exfat   defaults,nofail   0   0

The nofail option is essential so that the boot does not fail if the usb device is not connnected, or fails to mount.

Install WittyPi

WittyPi installation scripts allows the system to load the deamon for graceful startups and shutdowns.

Run the installation by using:

wget http://www.uugear.com/repo/WittyPi3/install.sh
chmod +x ./install.sh
./install.sh

You might need root (using sudo) to run the commands above.

Reboot the RaspberryPi for the deamon to load.

Running the program on boot

To run the scripts on boot, add it to crontab using

crontab -e

Add the line to run a bash script on boot:

@reboot /home/pi/run.sh

The run.sh script executes the Python scripts as a background process.