Wildlife Cameras

[Chris J Dixon]

As we are considering adding to our current bird and bat boxes, it has been suggested that getting ones with cameras might be interesting.

This may have been prompted by a recent documentary "The Great British Garden Watch", but I certainly don't want to emulate the guy who admitted to having spent thousands.

It seems that wired cameras are the sensible option, and I guess I could run them from my PC location. My garden is quite compact, but just laying cables against the fences feels a little exposed.

I'm not quite sure what the actual options are for monitoring, recording and display, and I guess that I need to provide a substantial hole in the wall to run (and possible add more) cables, yet keep things weather tight.

I suppose many of the answers will be the same for wildlife as for miscreants, which I know some of you keep an eye on.

Chris

[Caecilius]

There are "trail cams" which run off batteries and record to a memory card. Most have motion detection and IR illumination for night vision.

[newshound]

I have one of these, quite fun and useful for remote spots although the IR light range is not very far.

Another way to simplify the cabling problems is to use wireless cameras, powered off a local battery. I used to use this to provide in-car video from a horse trailer. Masses of stuff on eBay and elsewhere, including hard drive and SD card recorders (normally sold for security rather than wildlife applications). If your budget will stretch, get a four or even eight channel recorder and use multiple cameras for a better chance of catching good shots.

[Adam Aglionby]

Cat5 for cabling and CCTV CAT5 baluns unless go for I.P cams.

[Chris J Dixon]

Tell me more.

Chris

[Adam Aglionby]

Generic item not recommending specific vendor. They are generic and always use in pairs, no standard pinout...

Audio/Video/Power balancer/unbalacer, Balun, inside its just a tiny wound impedance matching trafo.

Video on BNC, power on 2.1mm D.C jack , audio on RCA/Phono, if you don`t use the audio can always use it as a trigger line from a PIR.

Have several in use ,for several years, longest one must be 80-90m out, video is fine and can drive the IR LED rings round the cam fine at that range as well. Wrapped in self amalgamating tape on outdoor cams.

Wired in exterior CAT5 but TBH unless your fussy plain CAT5 is fine.If you don`t want to crimp and can make holes big enough for the connectors just use pre made patch cables.

Run back to a standalone DVR, dinnae bother with a P.C. , 4 channel DVR is about 30 quid plus hard drive, av rated drive for preference, on ebay.

Small monitor is essential,faffing about with switching TV over all time dosen`t work.

Get decent PSU for cams a 2.1mm to N 2.1mm spider and a few 2.1mm to screw terminal adaptors and a roll of self amalgamating tape.

TBH starting from fresh would look at using POE network cams, POE switch and network DVR. Hikvision seem to be name in affordable network cams.

Board level cams aren`t ridiculously expensive in either analog or network flavour.

[Chris J Dixon]

Thanks Adam, it seems that I have lots of homework to do.

Looks like the two main ways I could get all this wrong is to spend lots of money, and not see much of interest, or spend less money, and be frustrated to be trapped in a technological dead-end.

Chris

[Adam Aglionby]

Looking at it at moment , for future project, would just discount analogue cams now. Cost has dropped so far in IP cams and NVRs.

Entry level to experiment , board cam , vendor does say offers different le nses, pinhole probably what want inside a nesting box, 720p IP cam board £15 quid

board-ONVIF/351378280400

mebbe add an IR led ring , couple of quid.

Powered via couple of `passive` POE adaptors