Post by matt on Sept 3, 2019 11:27:40 GMT
Righto - time for a new thread!
I have been working on a few new boxes to go with the three we already have, and also to (hopefully) provide a bit of an upgrade in both box design and camera/lighting quality.
I'm still at the prototyping stage for the first box, which I finally put up this morning for a trial run to test the new motion sensor and camera combo.
The camera is a Raspberry Pi v2 camera, which is an upgrade on my existing boxes which use v1 cameras. The v2 camera is said to offer better low light video capture, and can also produce still images up to 8MP, vs 5MP for the v1. Whether these improvements will be worth the extra cost is yet to be determined (£21 for v2 vs less than £5 for v1 "knock offs" from eBay).
I have also upgraded the Raspberry Pi computer in the new box to the new Model 3 A+ which hopefully will be able to handle live streaming to YouTube a little better than the Pi Zero - but again at extra cost (about £20 vs £10).
I'll go into more details when I have the time, if anyone is interested, but here are a few pics:
The internals:
Box in situ:
This is in the same location as a box last year that got quite a bit of interest, but no nest. There is a little more vegetation around this year nearby along the fence (bamboo and some climbers) so perhaps that will make the site a bit more attractive.
Here is the camera view from inside the box:
Box is up now and set to trigger on motion, so fingers crossed for a bit of interest soon. I'm not holding my breath though, since I only just removed the last box and that hadn't had a visit since June. Perhaps the new model box will get the locals curious?
I have been working on a few new boxes to go with the three we already have, and also to (hopefully) provide a bit of an upgrade in both box design and camera/lighting quality.
I'm still at the prototyping stage for the first box, which I finally put up this morning for a trial run to test the new motion sensor and camera combo.
The camera is a Raspberry Pi v2 camera, which is an upgrade on my existing boxes which use v1 cameras. The v2 camera is said to offer better low light video capture, and can also produce still images up to 8MP, vs 5MP for the v1. Whether these improvements will be worth the extra cost is yet to be determined (£21 for v2 vs less than £5 for v1 "knock offs" from eBay).
I have also upgraded the Raspberry Pi computer in the new box to the new Model 3 A+ which hopefully will be able to handle live streaming to YouTube a little better than the Pi Zero - but again at extra cost (about £20 vs £10).
I'll go into more details when I have the time, if anyone is interested, but here are a few pics:
The internals:
Box in situ:
This is in the same location as a box last year that got quite a bit of interest, but no nest. There is a little more vegetation around this year nearby along the fence (bamboo and some climbers) so perhaps that will make the site a bit more attractive.
Here is the camera view from inside the box:
Box is up now and set to trigger on motion, so fingers crossed for a bit of interest soon. I'm not holding my breath though, since I only just removed the last box and that hadn't had a visit since June. Perhaps the new model box will get the locals curious?