Plant-Timelapse

Records a timelapse of plants.

An IP camera (Wansview 2K G6) is monted on a adjustable arm and stream a top view of the plants on the cloud and locally via RTSP. A SBC (single board computer) (Raspberry Pi 3B) executes a cron job every day at noon to save a timelapse of the plant. Additionally, the cloud stream support real-time view of the camera and control of the LED lights.

The SBC is kept indoors, protected from environmental damage and burglary. The arm sub-system is low cost and custom made, reducing the risk of burglary and cost of replacement.

The camera module is configured to stream locally with a RTSP protocol, which is compatible to OpenCV VideoCapture class.

Figure 1. Arm-subsystem mounted on the planter

Figure 2. Sample of the top view capture

Figure 3. Screenshot of the app streaming real-time view of the planter

Figure 4. Generated gif with timelapse

Figure 5. Screen capture of local website

Components:

• Camera module (Wansview 2K G6)
• Raised bed planter (Self-Watering Elevated Cedar planter - 23" x 49" x 30"H)
• Custom camera arm support
• Raspberry Pi 3B

Installation

• OpenCV
• imageio
• numpy

TODO Add requirements.txt TODO Copy apache conf instead of sym-copy for better security

cd /home/garamizo/Software/Plant-Timelapse
sudo ln planter.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available  # install server conf file
sudo a2ensite planter.conf  # enable website
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf  # disable default website
sudo apache2ctl configtest  # verify configuration
sudo systemctl restart apache2  # restart webserver service
sudo systemctl status apache2  # check server

Adding Cron Job

Edit cron job list with $ crontab -e and append:

0 * * * * python3 /home/garamizo/Software/Plant-Timelapse/cam_snapshot.py
30 0 * * * python3 /home/garamizo/Software/Plant-Timelapse/make_gif.py

to execute cam_snapshot.py every hour and make_gif.py every day at 0:30(assuming this package is located at /home/garamizo/Software).

Mechanical Design

Novel or interesting features:

• All custom parts are 3D printed on PLA, 0.2mm layer height
• Arm joints are adjustable by 10 deg steps
• Press fit enclosures for camera head and power supply

Figure 6a. Arm assembly	Figure 6b. Head assembly

Camera Teardow

IP camera model Wansview 2K G6 features

• 3 MP (2304 x 1296 px)
• Vertical Angle of view: 50 deg
• Horizontal Angle of view: 80 deg
• LED lights
• Infrared LED
• Infrared camera filter
• Microphone
• Speaker
• Motorized pan and tilt (2x 24BYJ48 stepper motors)
• Wansview App to control lights and streaming