HardwareX 7 (2020) e00102 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect HardwareX journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ohx PlasPI marine cameras: Open-source, affordable camera systems for time series marine studies ⇑ Autun Purser a, , Ulrich Hoge a, Johannes Lemburg a, Yasemin Bodur b,c, Elena Schiller a, Janine Ludszuweit a, Jens Greinert a, Simon Dreutter a, Boris Dorschel a, Frank Wenzhöfer a,b a Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany b Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and Ecology, Bremen, Germany c Department of Arctic Marine Biology, UiT – the Arctic University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway d GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany article info abstract Article history: Imaging underwater can be particularly problematic and expensive given the harsh envi- Received 11 February 2019 ronmental conditions posed by salinity and for some deployments, pressure. To counter Received in revised form 20 January 2020 these difficulties, expensive waterproof pressure resistant housings are often used, com- Accepted 27 February 2020 monly built from expensive materials such as titanium, if intended for long duration deployments. Further, environmental investigations often benefit from replicate data col- lection, which additionally increases study costs. Keywords: In this paper we present a new camera system, developed with off the shelf and 3D Raspberry Pi printed cost effective components for use in shallow waters of <150 m depth. Marine imaging Time series Integrating Raspberry Pi Zero W microcomputers with open source design files and soft- Open source hardware ware, it is hoped these camera systems will be of interest to the global marine and fresh- Rapid prototyping water research communities. Ó 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Specifications table Hardware name PlasPi marine camera system Subject area Environmental, Planetary and Agricultural Sciences Hardware type Imaging tools Open Source License CERN Open Hardware Licence v1.2 Cost of Hardware PlasPi shallow marine camera: <200 Euro Source File Repository OSF https://osf.io/9t7h3/ ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Purser). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2020.e00102 2468-0672/Ó 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 2 A. Purser et al. / HardwareX 7 (2020) e00102 1. Hardware in context Imaging systems for marine application have been under near continuous deployment since 1856, when William Thomp- son first attached a camera to a stick and took the first documented underwater image [1]. From the 1890s, and the work of Louis Boutan [2], the interest of the general public in underwater flora and fauna has continued to grow, with TV shows such as ‘Blue Planet II’ garnering huge audience numbers and driving policy changes in waste management [3]. Aside from a general interest in the marine environment by the public as a whole, there are numerous scientific questions on marine ecosystem functioning which may be investigated with imaging systems [4]. Prior to the development of marine cameras, direct sampling of the seafloor required dredging or box coring – destructive practices which only produce limited spatial information at the time of sampling [5]. In contrast, imaging systems, be these still or video camera type systems, can collect data from the seafloor and water column without damaging the environment within which it is sampling [6]. Addi- tionally, the facility to leave cameras on the seafloor, or to tow them behind research vessels has allowed temporal and spa- tial data sets to be produced [7-9]. These temporal image data sets have been fundamental for the investigation of seasonality of food delivery to the deep sea seafloor over time, and for the mapping of marine habitats across scales of cen- timeters to kilometers. Ongoing developments in Light Emitting Diode (LED) design, digital cameras, image storage techniques, deep sea pressure housings and power storage now allow for long-duration deployments on the seafloor of cameras for many months, even for several years, given an appropriate pressure housing. As part of marine cabled research infrastructure camera systems can even be operated directly by remote operators via standard internet browsers from anywhere in the globe. High resolution cameras also allow information on much smaller flora, fauna or features to be gleaned from image data than was possible even a few decades ago. These new imaging systems are often very costly [10], limiting their use in temporal, remote or high risk deployments, such as within hydrothermal provinces or beneath ice in polar regions. For such research less expensive camera systems are required, where loss of devices can potentially be expected. For some investigations, such as those focusing on monitoring regions of seafloor, perhaps to assess changes over time both spatially and temporally, such as seafloor disturbance during a deep sea mining event, or following a pollution incident, then a number of cameras deployed in parallel would be advanta- geous. For this work, cheaper systems are to be preferred. Off the shelf systems such as the ‘GoPro’ family of cameras have found thriving communities of shallow water researchers and those involved in fauna monitoring [11], particularly given the easy access to plastic waterproof housings produced for the recreational diving community [12]. For depths of deeper than ~50 m depth recreational diving is no longer possible with standard equipment, so the commercial development of cheap housings stops at this depth. To use ‘GoPro’ cameras at deeper depths, as with other standard camera systems, custom or limited commercial production housings are required [13]. Prices of these housings can be in the 1000 s of euros, depending on camera size, required batteries and construction materials suit- able for the length of a particular deployment. A further difficulty in using off the shelf camera systems, be they ‘GoPro’ cameras or from other companies is that the options available for the user are often limited, in terms of image capture duration, aperture, time series functionality etc. Some of these can be hacked by users, often invalidating warranties and resulting in imaging systems which collect data which is difficult for interested researchers to easily replicate. This renders these ‘ad-hoc’ systems not ideal for peer review science applications. In contrast, this paper presents an alternative solution, using a Raspberry Pi Zero W microcomputer placed within a plastic housing and integrated with a camera lens, flash unit and batteries to produce an easily tailorable, cheap (<200 euro) marine camera system capable of deployment to depths of 150 m. The Raspberry Pi has proved to be an attractive platform for environmental sensor developers in recent years [14–17]. To tap into the enthusiasm of the ‘maker’ community for Raspberry Pi development and coding, [18] the PlasPi camera has been developed to operate with the standard Raspbian operating system running open access Python 3 scripts. 2. Hardware description Here a new camera system (the ‘PlasPi’ or ‘Plastic Pi’ camera), designed to capture underwater still images over extended time periods is presented. The system is built around a Raspberry Pi Zero W microcomputer board and runs open source python 3.0 scripts to operate. Built with standard off the shelf components and a limited number of small easily machined parts, within the capacity of small institutes to produce, the PlasPi is a shallow water (150 m depth rated) camera system with a plastic pressure housing (Fig. 1). The camera system has been well tested and can be mounted readily alongside other environmental sensing platforms, such as benthic Landers. By using an open source python script based programming approach, coupled with the Raspberry Pi Zero W microcomputer, the full array of previously developed maker community code is available for use in further developments of the camera system, as may be made by researchers keen to tailor the device for their own specific requirements. The version of the PlasPi camera presented here uses the cheap, low-end Rasp- berry Pi camera module v2, a commonly used 3280 Â 2464 pixel camera of moderate quality, but known performance. This A. Purser et al. / HardwareX 7 (2020) e00102 3 Fig. 1. PlasPi camera, deployed at the Tisler cold-water coral reef, Norway. ~100 m depth. Photo: GEOMAR JAGO team. can be swapped out for more advanced modules by researchers requiring higher quality images, but for these build plans the v2 module will be discussed exclusively. 3 LEDs capable of illuminating several sq. m of seafloor sufficiently to allow ~5000 high resolution images to be collected per deployment Fully programmable exposure time and time series settings Cheap construction – plastic pressure housing rather than steel or titanium (traditional housings for commercial cameras) Standard camera lens components for straightforward replication/maintenance Low power consumption and WiFi (IEEE 802.11x) connectivity minimizes pressure housing opening requirements 3. Design files Table 1 gives the full list of design files required to construct the PlasPi camera system. The descriptions of each uploaded file are divided below by specific camera type. Table 1 Design