Birdcam ** 2010 update starts at post 202 **

wonder_lander

In 2006 we moved from Brighton upto Stone, Staffordshire. The house that we bought had a bird box on the garage wall and much to our extreme pleasure the box was used for blue tit chicks in the spring of 2007.

Unfortunately with these things we never got to see the chicks, all we could here was the chirp chirp and then one day they where gone!

For 2008 we came up with the idea of installing "Birdcam". This would be a small infrared camera mounted on the roof of the bird box which would then be connected up to a PC to archive footage and update a website with the content.

Having done a bit of background reading on tits it became apparent that we needed to have the camera installed by January at the latest if we weren't to disturb the birds.

January 2008 - The box build

First thing was to order the equipment. I had seen people selling pre-made kits on the internet for this sort of thing so just took a look at what they offered and via ebay and Hong Kong I purchased 1 Infrared camera, 1 10m extension cable and 1 CCTV PCI capture card, grand total was about £25

Parts bought:

The camera itself, shown here with a 1p coin as reference



The Extension Cable



And the CCTV Capture card



Then we move onto "The Build"

First thing was to take apart the bird box, easily done with many screws on the front, back, sides, top and bottom!





With the tiles removed I fixed the camera mounting bracket to the roof.









Then it was time to rebuild the box allowing for the drilling of a channel to feed the cable out of the birdbox.






The cable was then hooked up to the extension cable and ran into the garage and connected to an old Athlon 800mhz PC I had spare.

The CCTV card that came from ebay was supplied with some dodgy ripped off version of PICO2000 so I looked to find a legit alternative.

The people who made PICO2000 had their own legit version but it was lacking in some of the functionality I needed such as the ability to e-mail when motion is detected.

After a bit of research I came across Cam Wizard which looked good. I had to grab a WDM driver for the capture card and then my camera worked in Cam Wizard, hurrah!

Over the next few weeks I tweaked the setup but it became only too aparent that the Athlon couldn't encode the video in a smooth manner so I looked to source a replacement!

A friendly uncle had a P4 2.8Ghz spare so I snaffled that and saw about another PC rebuild to get it up and running. The PC I was given was a Dell Dimensions and it came with an Audigy 2 sound card, this gave me nothing but hassle!! With the card installed all I got was a black screen so in the end I pulled the sound card.

This brings us up to this weekend where I got the PC all sorted, I've registered the CAM Wizard software ($40 + VAT) and I've created a web page that captures from the camera every 10 mins.

The action so far has been quite frequent but the tits are just at the stage where they are investigating potential sites! We seem to have had a few second viewings so hopefully there will be some moving in sooN!

Thanks for reading, below is a snap shot from the camera and a smaple video will follow!




Anyone who wants to see the current capture then the URL is http://www.mission74.com

Any questions just fire away!

wonder_lander

Well nest building began on the 23rd of March and tonight looks like the "moving in" night!

Below is an end of day capture since the 23rd and you'll notice in the update tonight that there's a little ball of fluff that hasn't been there in previous nights...awwww!

Sorry about the huge size but thought this would be the best way to show the "build"!



Live image updated every 10 mins so you can check on her sleeping!

~Chameleon~

Oh wow, what a fantastic idea! :T

It's something I pondered doing with our house martins' nest but it's difficult knowing where best to site the camera as they don't always build it exactly the same each year.

I'm looking forward to watching your birdcam though and have bookmarked it in my favourites

wonder_lander

A direct link to the blog is http://birdcam.mission74.com and you can see the videos I've converted via youtube.

Alisonpennypincher

Thats fab, waht a lovely idea! Watch out Bill Oddie and spring watch!! Thankyou for the link, i have also bookmarked it.
APP

wonder_lander

I had considered buying a box with the camera already installed but these ran to about £80! As I knew the existing box had previously been used it seemed like a simple enough task to put the camera in!

cjb02

Great idea,

Can I ask what stuff did you need and where did you get the stuff from? and what were the costs involved?

I saw some sort of pc card and the camera had different types of connections on.

CJB

wonder_lander

Camera came from ebay, was imported from hong kong and cost £9.39 inc delviery
PC Card was also from ebay and hong kong and cost £8.97
I already had the spare PC so that was £0.00
Then the CAM Wizard software was $39.99 so about £20.00
Total cost therefore was £38.36

alanobrien

Very nicely done !

wonder_lander

Well she's back for the second night running.

This video shows her transforming from feathers to fluff ball!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KBug4bRvms

annie123

Thanks for the set up advice.

Wish I had somewhere to put one, as I live in a first floor maisonette I have the upper part of the building but would need to go into downstairs garden with ladder and detailed explanation of what is required and that involves a request in triplicate 3 months in advance:rolleyes:

My garden does have a robbins nest in a hedge every year so might try to rig something up for that.
Do keep posting pics/links lovely to see and a bargain price:D