Maker TinkerTurtle, as they’re known on GitHub, has created the motion activated Portal turret of our dreams—and, best of all, it’s Raspberry Pi powered. This project is referred to as the Sentry Picam and it’s totally open source for anyone who wants to make one of their own.
Inside is a Raspberry Pi Zero W which offers both a small form factor as well as wireless support. The unit is fitted with a camera module inside capable of streaming 1080p at 30 fps. The feed can be viewed at any time from a custom web interface.
The best Raspberry Pi projects for beginners don’t require much hardware to get started and, thankfully, it doesn’t take much to create this project. It’s powered by the Raspberry Pi Zero W and the Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 works fine for video input. The biggest creative aspect of this project is the turret housing, inspired by the turrets found in the video game ‘Portal’. This model can be found on Thingiverse for anyone looking to print their own.
Software-wise, things get a little more complex. There are a couple of prerequisites to get the turret off the ground including both Raspivid and Ffmpeg. With those two installed, the Sentry Picam application developed by TinkerTurtle is all that’s left.
To get a closer look at this turret, check out the original thread shared to Reddit. Just be sure to stay out of sight before it activates.
