Digital camera’s are great, but often restrict you to the functionalities the manufacturer has preprogrammed. Raspberry Pi’s and Arduino’s let you create very different types of camera’s that can do a lot more. You can do image processing on the camera itself (detecting features you are interested in). Or you can combine multiple images (like a normal and an infrared) to see things that you normally can’t. Please let us know if you want to use something, then we can bring the stuff we have to the meetup, or order some additional parts!
- Wildlife Camera based on a kit from Naturebytes http://naturebytes.org Standard this kit is using a PIR (passive infrared sensor) to snap a picture when an animal hops in front of it. Maybe you can make the camera ‘smart’ so it can recognise (and count) different species.
- MultiSpectral camera that combines several images to make invisible things visible (like photosynthesis in plant leaves). A cool example of this is the TetraPi design of Koen Hufkens: https://khufkens.com/2015/04/24/tetrapi-a-well-characterized-multispectral-camera/ .
- Balloon mapping kit https://publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping Let your camera fly and get an overview from above. (‘stitching software’ being available from Public Lab)
- Do it yourself thermocam to combine an high res visable image with a low res infrared image. Very handy to see if your house is leaking heat. https://github.com/maxritter/DIY-Thermocam (parts need to be ordered).