Standalone DEEPi drop cameras

DEEPi will be attached to drop camera BRUVs and record video.

Overview

Tasked with creating a DEEPi BRUV system to film sharks in the Bahamas. This system will only include a single node which can be directly controlled by the client computer when on the surface.

Note: New versions of DEEPi software are already in the works. This system works on old code based on V2.0. The only software changes have been in the README documentation. This software and this document will be obsolete in the near future. Check for updates before using.

Quickstart

Power on DEEPi Cams in range of a DEEPi Router and wait until blinking is done. DEEPi Cams will autostart the appropriate Python scripts.
Connect a laptop to the DEEPi router.
Open a web browser and go to http://raspberrypi.local:5000
Click start stream to view stream.
Click rotate until the view is facing the correct way.
Click deploy to start recording video.
Mark the time or hold a watch to the camera.
Click stop stream to pause the stream (saves power and processing speed)
DIVE
Recover
Reconnect browser to http://raspberrypi.local:5000
Click reboot to stop recording and reset the device

Accessing Media

Power on DEEPi Cams in range of a DEEPi Router and wait until blinking is done. DEEPi Cams will autostart the appropriate Python scripts.
Connect a laptop to the DEEPi router.
Open an FTP client such as FileZilla.
Set host to raspberrypi.local
Set user and password to pi and raspberry
Leave port blank (or set to 21, the standard FTP port)
Connect
Navigate to </home/pi/Videos> or </home/pi/Pictures>.
Transfer all the files to the user computers and delete off the DEEPi

WARNING: The DEEPi is inherently unstable storage for many reasons, not the least of which is that it could be eaten by a shark... Never leave files on the device when you have the opportunity to remove them. Additionally, storage is limited and potentially crippling until that bug is solved, so be sure to wipe the drive clean before each use.

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Use python3 not python. Standard python on the RPI-Zero is 2.7. It should work, but the code was not designed to work with 2.7.

Changing code

Change code on your computer and transfer it to the pi via FTP. You can do it over SSH, but that makes it hard to record changes. Best practice would be to clone this repo and use GIT to track changes.

The code is set up so that <deepi.py> is the main module. This includes a class called DEEPi which can be called. The <deepi.py> file does not run any code. It only facilitates simple scripts. Most options can be added without touching this file. Additionally, the DEEPi class has all of the attributes and methods of the PiCamera class.

To develop new functionality, generally all that is needed to to tap into this class. Looking at the help file will show everything it can do.

>>> from deepi import DEEPi
>>> camera = DEEPi()
>>> help(camera)

<app.py> is the script that is actually called by the startup programs. This can easily be replaced with a script that runs automatic functions.

Address not recognized

It is possible that an incorrect address is being used or that Avahi/Bonjour is not working properly for hostname recognition. In this case access the routers admin page and go to the DHCP clients list.

No Connection (browser or ftp)

Double check that DEEPi and router are on.
Double check that the router has the correct SSID and PSK.

ESSID = DEEPiNet PSK = deepinet
Try to add a network

Scripts not auto-starting/working

The auto start works by running in the file </etc/rc.local>. It is a single line right before the end of the file.

runuser -l  pi -c 'python3 /home/pi/deepi/app.py'

To check this is working, SSH into the DEEPi and run ps aux | grep python which lists all jobs currently running and then displays only lines that have the phrase 'python' in them. To get a list of all jobs, run ps aux. To get a list of jobs owned by the current user, run ps. Using these commands you can find out if the app.py is running.

Note: ps commands will also display themselves in the list of jobs running.

If the script is running, kill it. killall python3 or killall python. This may require sudo. Now run the script manually, and see if any errors pop up while using it. If errors do pop up, read the error message and correct the code.

The most likely issue is that the save point is not working properly. Check where the error message says it is attempting to save files and make sure those directories exist.

mkdir /path/to/directory

Add network

If you have SSH access to the DEEPi, this can be done through sudo raspi-config.

If you have access to the SD card, a network can be added through the <wpa_supplicant.conf> file in the directory.

WARNING: The <wpa_supplicant.conf> file is simple, but if you mess it up when the DEEPi is potted, you could brick the DEEPi.

If you do not have access to SSH or the SD card, you can try modifying the network SSID and PSK to match what you believe the DEEPi is configured for. Cell phone hotspots allow these changes.

Note: DEEPi will only connect to 2.4 GHz networks.

Modify to simplify

If things really are not working, we can go to a simplier script. Below is the method within the DEEPi class which called the deploy button is clicked.

def deploy(self, splitTime = 600):
	'''Run deployment script'''
	print("Recording first video")
	PiCamera.start_recording( self, output='/home/pi/Videos/{}.h264'.format(next(name) ), splitter_port=1)
	while True:
		PiCamera.wait_recording(self, timeout=splitTime, splitter_port=1)
		print("Splitting recording")
		PiCamera.split_recording( self, output='/home/pi/Videos/{}.h264'.format(next(name)), splitter_port=1)

If we are trying to simplify, we can do away with the app and just make a script that calls this function. Then use rc.local to call this script. In this case we do not have any way to confirm the workings of camera, but it should run.

import deepi

cam = deepi.DEEPi()
cam.deploy(splittime=600)

Hardware

See further notes from Nick and Brennan.

?x DEEPi Cams (1x standalone)
1x DEEPi Router with 2.4GHz Network set to SSID=DEEPiNet ans PSK=deepinet. The router can be reached at http://192.168.8.1 and the admin password is admin.

Contributors

This is a University of Rhode Island URIL project.

Brennan Phillips
Nicholas Chaloux
Russell Shomberg

Appendix

Client Software Dependencies

python3
deepiclient: For python dependencies, see requirements.txt

DEEPiCam Setup

This setup process is now handled by the deepi-boot-script which will be linked shortly.

apt-get install python3

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

sudo apt-get install python3-distutils

python3 get-pip.py --user

pip3 install picamera --user

pip3 install flask --user

From local computer

scp -r ./* pi@raspberrypi.local:

Add this line to rc.local runuser -l pi -c 'python3 /home/pi/app.py' &

mkdir Videos

mkdir Pictures

Set up FTP server sudo apt install proftpd

sudo raspi-config Enable camera and reboot.

rshom/DEEPi-BRUV