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ZanzoCam

Low-power, low-frequency, autonomous remote camera based on Raspberry Pi.

Download image Go to GitHub

Setup

To build a ZanzoCam you need three parts:

  • The hardware: a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a few other components, depending on your usecase.
  • The software: an OS image to flash on your microSD (you can also build the system from scratch).
  • A server to receive your pictures: either a simple FTP folder, or a minimal VPC able to run PHP 5+ scripts.

Check out the respective pages for a more detailed look at each of them.

Features

ZanzoCam is designed for remote, long-term and low-frequency monitoring of remote, off-grid and hard-to-reach locations, so the project focuses on reliability, autonomy and remote configurability.

ZanzoCam supports several hardware configurations to adapt to different usecases, which you can see here. They range from a simple WiFi+power line setup to more complex, solar-powered and 3G enabled configurations.

Some relevant features include:

  • Can add text or small icons onto the picture, and this text/icons can be changed remotely at any time.
  • Works with different Internet access types: WiFi, Ethernet (soon), 3G (soon).
  • Any board compatible with Raspberry Pi OS and picamera (image quality is not guaranteed in this case and other bugs might occurr).
  • Configurable intervals for shooting pictures, including night break to avoid black images.
  • Server hot-swap: no manual intervention required on the device.

ZanzoCam does not need:

  • Public and/or static IP address for your Raspberry Pi (the server does need one).
  • VPN: you might add it if you wish, but it’s not used by the system itself.
  • A powerful server (free VPCs are great for this purpose, as long as they can run PHP5+ scripts).

ZanzoCam does not support:

  • Video streams
  • Direct SSH access (do it yourself with a VPN or a public IP if you wish)
  • Any upload protocol other than FTP and HTTP (no Dropbox, no Google Drive, etc)

Acknowledgements

ZanzoCam has been developed in collaboration with CAI Lombardia, that deployed several devices running this software on their affiliate huts.