Birdbox - Countdown to Springwatch starts

Two years ago we had our first attempt at having a camera in our garden birdbox connected to a tv. It didn't go well as the diy infra-red failed to work resulting in a dark mess only slightly bettered for an hour a day when the sun was in the right place.

(Birdbox, with experimental camera setup)

Last year we tried again and expanded, got a couple cheap IR CMOS cameras of eBay, put up an extra birdbox and reused an old PC and tv card. The new box didn't get any birds, the original box had the returning bluetits though. The old PC was usable, connected via wifi for remote access but the downsides were, the video was recorded uncompressed, having USB 1.0 meant transfering out of the PC was slow and being an old PC meant more regular transfers to stop the harddisk from filling up were needed, and some editing to avoid our main PC's harddisk filling up.

(Bluetit prepare to enter the box)

Well this year we're planning some improvements, not massive leaps but small cheap upgrades to make life a little easier.

In my next post I'll go through our main upgrade, but will leave you with some pics from last year.

 (Bluetit outside box)

(Bluetit on top of WiFi aerial)

(Close up of CMOS camera - available on ebay)