Streaming from an underwater camera with a Raspberry Pi
Among this summer’s projects was getting an underwater camera online and streaming. The camera is placed within a fishing device designed like a cage, called Kjærra, dating back to the 14th century. The trap has a one-way entry; the fish enters the cage and can’t escape, and is subsequently extracted from the cage. When the trap is opened, the salmon (or trout) inside will be auctioned off to the spectators.
Underwater camera
Starting with the camera itself, an underwater camera was acquired. The camera unit was secured between two pieces of wood, to make mounting easier and to prevent the camera from being destroyed or dismounted when the fish are extracted from the cage. The camera comes with a 20 meter cable which we led to a nearby dry location, where it’s powered from a battery and charger, providing a stable power source. The camera even has LEDs for night vision, but we’re not using it since it could confuse and scare the fish.
Finding underwater cameras that provide IP network video streams seemed quite impossible. This camera was no exception, providing only regular video signal (the good old yellow RCA plug). To convert the video signal into a computer readable format, we connected the very portable Vivotek VS8100 video server. Apart from the 12V power plug, the unit offers a video signal socket (BNC) and an RJ45 network socket. The unit could even be directly connected to the 12V power cable already provided with the camera.
Video server
The final piece was of course a Raspberry Pi mini computer, completing the chain by connecting it to the video server. Running the brilliant piece of software avconv, the Raspberry Pi pulls an RTSP video stream from the video server and converts it into an RMTP video stream which in turn is accepted by the streaming distribution server, an Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5. When we’re not streaming live, a short film with some useful information is shown instead.
When streaming live, what the camera sees may be viewed at Østlands-posten’s site. Østlands-posten is hosting the stream distribution; thanks a lot!
Also thanks to Magnus and Lasse at Arkena for hints and clues in this project.
This is the avconv command line, with any sensitive information redacted:
/usr/bin/avconv \ -i rtsp://underwatercam:554/live.sdp \ -f flv \ -vcodec copy \ -an \ rtmp://fms-server/path?doPublish=MyPassword/streamName >/dev/null 2>&1