One if the nicest things about Raspberry PIs is that there is great documentation online that is easy to follow. I’m using the Raspberry Pi 3 model B with Raspbian available here

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

Next, the RPI needs to be setup as a wifi access point to allow the RPI to directly communicate with other web enabled devices.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md

Next, the Raspberry Pi will need to be set up to use the upward pointing camera. I’m using a raspberry pi camera v2 for this camera.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/camera.md

That is the initial tools we’ll need to get started.