Allotment stake-out

[mike]

We have the mandatory nutter on our allotment. Of course he has to reside on a plot near ours. Lately we have had dead birds dumped in places on our plot and some crops trampled. (& more of the same). Anyway, wonder if anyone can suggest a cctv system i could use to take a frame say every 5 seconds for a day or so and write it to a SD card? I have a car battery spare and can rig a solar trickle charge - but what/how to rig the camera/recorder? If we could get some evidence then maybe we could do something about it. tvm

[Tim]

You want a camera trap. Not cheap but a fun toy.

[jgharston]

JGH

[Stephen H]

You can buy PIR detectors that look like they are part of an alarm system but actually have a concealed camera within them and record a frame every so many seconds to a SD card.

see

[ss]

This might be enough for your needs, and cheap....

[Alan]

[Steve Firth]

mike wrote: [snip]

A trail camera will do what you want. I use "Llittle Acorn" cameras to keep an eye on the farm.

be set to shoot stills or video. Flash not visible at night, uses IR flash to take black & white photos. Has sideways pointing PIR to avoid people sneaking upon the camera unobserved.

[mike]

ha ha ha that is funny.

[John Stumbles]

combination of an undetectable alarm clock and a practical surveillance gadget."

The alarm clock looked pretty damn' detectable to me. Actually the camera bit wasn't too covert either: a wtf-is-this hole in the front, nice bevelled edge around it to make it more obvious, and a set of lines around it drawing attention to it!

[mogga]

Just create some interesting pea climbing frames along the edges of your plot.

[soup]

Not being an apologist for this, but as a camera hole is needed on the front and knowing it can't be hidden totally the only other thing to do is make a feature of it and pretend it is a hole for a speaker (alarm/radio etc).

[Alan Deane]

I have one of those, video quality is poor, motion detection rubbish, and once triggered it takes ages to write the video then 're-arm' - so usually misses the actual event you were interested in, and the battery life in video recording mode is only a day or so. Also, doesn't date/time stamp the video files, even it is supposed to.

There is a (red?) LED that flashes when armed - which kinda defeats the object for a 'hidden' device. I un-soldered it - before giving up on it. As just a clock, it's fine!