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

In addition to using a beaglebone I strongly suggest that you get a suitable camera that has a very fast lens. This is to ensure that your pictures do not have the fish end up as just coloured smudges on a murky backdrop. Depending upon the depth you may also need to provide suitable lighting. As for sensing the fish you will probably need a sonar just like those used for fish finders as this can measure range.

Another question to ask is whether the electronics need to be at depth. Depending upon the application the electronics aside from the camera and sensor could be floating on the surface of the water and even be solar charged.

If you want this hermetically sealed without any penetrations (i.e. holes) you could use the TI QI power solution to provide power and act as a messaging conduit.

@ COMPACT :     Would you be able to recommend any suitable cameras which would be able to record straight to sd using the beaglebord? Regarding lighting the initial prototype will not need to go very deep, it will be tested in a 2m deep tank which will have sufficient lighting. As for sonar sensors, that it a great concept however for the initial prototype it will just be turned on manually before an underwater sound occurs (e.g piling ) - start to take video/pictures of the fish before the sound, once the sound starts record the particle velocity and sound pressure and use these measurments with the video/ images we can look at hows these sounds effect fish behaviour.

id be most likely looking at the unit being placed on the seabed.

@ Joe :     I will definetly be looking at the camera cape. Regarding the breadboard cape, I have access to normal breadboards to use within my project, im pretty sure ill be able to use these with the beagleboard to keep costs down?

Thanks for the replies

@ COMPACT :     Would you be able to recommend any suitable cameras which would be able to record straight to sd using the beaglebord? Regarding lighting the initial prototype will not need to go very deep, it will be tested in a 2m deep tank which will have sufficient lighting. As for sonar sensors, that it a great concept however for the initial prototype it will just be turned on manually before an underwater sound occurs (e.g piling ) - start to take video/pictures of the fish before the sound, once the sound starts record the particle velocity and sound pressure and use these measurments with the video/ images we can look at hows these sounds effect fish behaviour.

id be most likely looking at the unit being placed on the seabed.

@ Joe :     I will definetly be looking at the camera cape. Regarding the breadboard cape, I have access to normal breadboards to use within my project, im pretty sure ill be able to use these with the beagleboard to keep costs down?

Thanks for the replies

Hi people,

I have now recieved the beaglebone and have sucessfully opened up the cloud9 IDE using windows. Now I have started to play around with the beaglebone, however I have become stuck, as in i am not sure how to progress with the project using this board. Firstly I have an Labtec webcam, what would be the simplest way to take pictures using the webcam and store them to sd?

It seems alot of people are having problems in connecting a webcam to the beaglebone, which i didnt think would be so hard.

thanks and i will cary on trying