Just curious what others are using for optimal camera settings on the Pi camera in terms of best underwater use - ISO, brightness, etc.
Also what are the default settings with the BlueROV2 setup?
@schoonerlabs - The default settings turn up the brightness, contrast, and saturation slightly. We chose this based on experimental tests. I don’t have an equivalent ISO value.
How would you like it to change?
-Rusty
I think part of the issue may be the short focal length of the wide angle lens and focus issues. Also found it a bit under exposed. When comparing to the GoPro footage it was very hard to see in comparison.
Has anyone looked at integrating a GoPro into the live stream from the Pi? This might be a nice step up option.
I also noticed OpenROV have a new camera system, maybe some potential for similar?
@schoonerlabs, Regarding the GoPro: I’ve looked in to it enough to say that yes, it should be possible but performance may not be acceptable.
HDMI Option: You can run the GoPro HDMI stream to an HDMI/USB capture card and then to the RPi. Unfortunately, the first hangup is RPi’s USB 2.0 ports and the latency you’ll pick up there. That’s about where I stopped looking. USB video to QGC is for people smarter than me.
WiFi Option: GoPro can stream to RPi via wifi but with even more delay. Again, that’s where I stopped looking. Wifi video stream to QGC is for people much, much smarter than me.
For now, I think a GoPro as a secondary camera is still the most useful. I do plan on experimenting with connecting it to the RPi via wifi and streaming to MPlayer or OMXPlayer, then using VNC from the laptop back to the RPi to view the stream. I would expect very, very poor performance but at least you could see the GoPro view from the surface.
For now, it looks to me like working with the RPi camera module is probably the most practical approach for the live stream to QGC. On the other hand we still have three more twisted pairs on the tether. With another Rpi and housing, I can imagine all kinds of secondary video options. . .