A trio of young makers created a fantastic Raspberry Pi 3–based underwater camera that investigates water quality and organisms. Sensea underwater camera — Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #170. The latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine — out now — features this Raspberry Pi 3 – based underwater camera that investigates water quality and organisms.
Unboxed STEM Club consists of three friends aged 10 to 13 who meet up each weekend, along with two enthusiastic dads. The boys’ defining approach is to ask lots of questions, “look at problems as connected puzzles with many possible answers”, and keep trying hands-on solutions even if things go wrong at first. The airtight tube houses a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 on a custom 3D-printed base, plus a temperature sensor Pinak, Vihaan, and Yuvan, along with their mentors Kshitij Varma and Dr Amol Patil, were excited by the idea of tackling a hands-on science, engineering, and coding project.
They were inspired by the fact that we often talk about protecting oceans and rivers, but rarely have the tools to measure what’s happening below the surface and in the depths. Raspberry Pi had huge appeal as a compact computer that they could write code for themselves, connect to many sensors, and use to directly control a Camera Module. Although they hadn’t used Raspberry Pi for STEM Club projects before, they realised it was an obvious choice for their citizen science aims, particularly as it came with an impressive online resource: thousands of willing and helpful fellow Raspberry Pi users.
The fact that the whole build would come in at around £130 and could largely be built by the boys, with minimal adult supervision, set it apart from most underwater explorers in terms of both complexity and cost.
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