What would be best for this application? beagleboard? raspberry pi?

This sounds like quite the project!

I agree with John as well but I would personally use a BeagleBone or BeagleBoard. I have been playing with one and the python makes programming very easy. It is very fast and I think you will have very good luck with it. I believe anything in a single board computer format will work just fine for you, but it is basically how much data you really need to process. To take a picture is simple and store it. A BeagleBone is a very good tool but like you stated, if you want horsepower, get the BeagleBoard! They are so easy to use and it seems like everything was made so well!

You can use something like the following setup as an example:

LI-LBCM3M1 camera from Leopard Imaging, a module specially designed to work with BeagleBoard.

The module main features are :

• CMOS Sensor MT9T111 from Aptina
• 2048 x 1536 (3M) pixels resolution
• Output Data Format: YUV ( YCbCr)
• Focal Length: f=3.78+ /-0.1 mm, F2.8+ /-5%
• Vertical View Angle : 61.40
• Focus Distance : 120cm +/-2cm
• Focus Range : 60cm to Infinity

The advantage of using this kind of cameras compared to a USB Web-cam is the speed:

The Camera module from LI is directly connected to the Camera Image Signal Processing (ISP) interface on DM3730 (Beagle Board CPU) and thus, data from camera module can be processed much  faster than an USB camera.

The other good news is that this camera is supported in the Angstrom Linux Kernel, however only in the 2.6.32 version. The camera patches can be found here.

To enable the camera support you need an U-Boot  that contains I2C lines initialisation pull-ups (I’m using u-boot version 2011.09-r4)  and include the camera name in the U-Boot environment variables (uEnv.txt) :

For the kernel (omap-psp-2.6.32) make sure that the mt9t112 driver module is enabled :

Device Drivers ->

Mutimedia support ->

Video capture adapters ->

Encoders/decoders and other helper chips ->

<M> mt9t112 support

If everything went ok you should see something like that in your kernel traces (dmesg):

mt9t112 2-003c: mt9t111 chip ID 2680

and the  /dev/video0 node should also be  available.

To get some infos about the camera:

To take the first pictures, I used MPlayer:

To record a video using Mencoder:

Then you would need code to process the pictures either on the device or when you plug the SD card into your computer at home, office, school. As far as the hydrophone and accelerometer, these are very easy to come by and plug in, but it will take some programming to back all of the data at whatever frequency you prefer.

I guess in conclusion, I would try to use the smallest device with the most horsepower for the buck, but I am not sure of your application limits. It seems that most of the available single board computers will be able to the required processing for your needs. If you wanted one picture a second then I would highly suggest spending more money on a High Capacity Fast SD card so you won't miss any pictures, and to keep the processor cooler.

I didnt expect such a detailed responsed johnsocm, but thanks alot, it has given me alot to think about.

Basically i need to weigh up the pros and cons of each route that i would be able to take, then justify the reasons why i have taken the route which i end up choosing. I have only been given a budget of approximately £100, however items such as the hydrophone will be provided due to cost!

I dont really require much processing power as like i said, ill just need to take some snaps a few per second and really just wanted some idea as to which would be the simplest and easiest way to go about it. the aim of the project is to create an underwater system capable of capturing video, measuring acoutics and particle velocity to help understand the effects that underwater piling has on fish. so when the piling starts you can see how the fish behave.

Would something like this work?

BeagleBone - £60

32GB Mini SD - £12

LI-LBCM3M1 camera - £26.40 (Is this compatiable with both the beaglebone and beagleboard?)

accceleromemter - these are generally quite cheap

hydrophone - provided

underwater housing - will be made in house

i dont have a high level of programming experience, but how hard would it be to make the hydrophone and accelerometer system connect to the board and record data?

Sorry i think i got a bit carried away with this overly long reply

What I would suggest is buy a BeagleBone and play with the examples. I feel you can do this project with just the Beaglebone and not the board. There is enough I/O's and processing power to do your design.

The Beaglebone makes programming very easy and with the example I showed above you can setup the beaglebone and camera and take a picture or movie and not even know how to program. You can just modify the program and do what you want but python makes programming very easy! And partnered with the easy to use beaglebone would be a great start!

What I would suggest is buy a BeagleBone and play with the examples. I feel you can do this project with just the Beaglebone and not the board. There is enough I/O's and processing power to do your design.

The Beaglebone makes programming very easy and with the example I showed above you can setup the beaglebone and camera and take a picture or movie and not even know how to program. You can just modify the program and do what you want but python makes programming very easy! And partnered with the easy to use beaglebone would be a great start!

That sound very viable,  I may order one this week as I have had some experience with python.

Sorry i think im just missing something but you just said i can do the project with just the beaglebone and not the board? did you mean the camera board?

thanks again

Hi Yasin, if you would like continue to post your design progress on this site as a BLOG then I would be happy to send you a BeagleBoneBeagleBone to use in your design.

send me a private message.

Regards,

Shawn