Time to Get Steaming

If the stream is live right now, you can see it here.

So, the cameras have been around for a while now, and they have weathered the elements for two winters, so I am confident that I can do something outside with them, but I need a purpose. In the background I have been playing with software and setups, but to merge the various efforts together the cameras need to become a platform for, well, something.

So, announcing the bird and critter cams, v1.

At some point I realized that you cannot let perfection defeat progress, and decided summer was here, it was time to start.  Start what? Streaming the happy birdies and critters in the yard, of course.  I started setting this up two weekends ago, but my terrible WiFi made it impossible to download anything from the camera, let alone stream. I did get some nice motion-activated video, a lot of it from the fat squirrel who was abusing the bird feeders when I first set them up.

I actually set this up in late February. I got the cylinder feeder as a Christmas gift, and it had a really cute squirrel sculpted out of seeds and nuts. I put that out and did not even see a bird and two days later it was gone. Someone found it, and it was still cold and snowy, so whoever found it was probably hungry. Still, would have been nice to see.

So this time a made sure to have a camera where I could see something.

The first two weekends were very entertaining, between the birds and the squirrel.

Squirrel on feeder.

The hopper feeder went through a 2lb bag of bird food each weekend. Not sure how much the squirrel got, but she was doing all kinds of gymnastics to get to it.

The cylinder has some built in squirrel protection: hot pepper. It doesn’t bother the birds but other critters don’t like it.

That was before installing the anti-squirrel baffle.

Yesterday I picked up some more food, got the cameras ready and installed the baffle, but have not seen any squirrels on the feeder yet. I did see one exploring the lawn with the wide-angle camera paired with the streaming camera, but the motion-detection sensitivity is too low to detect a squirrel.  (Something we will work on…) And, the squirrel never made it in to my field of view. In any case, it appears the anti-squirrel measures have worked so far. I was expecting to see them leap from the fence, but that has not happened, yet.

Back to overcoming problems, and the long list of what to do next.

With the WiFi being terrible (I blame my Netgear routers), I ran a wire to the cameras. If you have seen the cameras before, there is no place for an ethernet cable. Time for a redesign, but that will have come later.  Here is the ‘field expedient’ modification.

Yes, that is a hole drilled in the bottom, and a gap in the back. If I could have crimped the cable myself it might have fit better (without all the molded plastic around the tip).

Now, next steps (in no order, yet):

• add sound
• add high quality sound
• redesign case (oh, the sd card is too hard to get to, too!)
• fix the ugly wiring job and get a switch in the yard to connect multiple cameras to the ethernet.

Ok, that seems like enough for now.

Thanks, for stopping by.