The “Gecko Cam” was the instrumentation and automation setup for our pet gecko Rimbaud’s vivarium.

Despire my original intentions, there was very little automation involved. Initially I had intended to automate a heat mat and a misting system to regulate the temperature and humidity in the vivarium. As it currently stands these parameters are monitored but not controlled.

The setup was based around a Raspberry Pi Model A+, along with a NoIR camera and AM2315 thermometer & hygrometer. Sensor data is recorded every 15 minutes, and used to generate graphs and send emails if either temperature or humidity goes out of pre-set limits. It was connected to the internet and will also upload the graphs and a photo to a web server.

The AM2315 sensor uses the I2C protocol, which was chosen over the cheaper thermometer and hygrometer sensors that bit-bang their output. The connection to the Pi was made via a breadboard for testing.

The result was published on the web at http://rimbaud.renton.es, but is no longer online. Software can be downloaded from the the git repo, which also explains more about the software side of the setup.