Birdcam - Winter feeding

Been testing out the cheap camera's I got, below is my first attempt, it's a little too close to the subject and I didn't take account that when the bird in on the fat ball that the camera will move.

From the footage I got,  think the bird too some interest in the camera at first before tucking into the fat ball.

 

Mini Sport Digital Video Camcorder

I bought myself an couple Mini Sport Digital Video Camcorders from 7DayShop, as you can see from the photo I've taken they are very small.  They are very basic, limited to two options, normal record or record via sound activation.  It's the sound activation and the cheap price that made me want to try them out, I'm thinking they could come in useful when the bird nesting season is upon us again next year.

Not really put it through it's paces yet but so far, quality I would put on par with web-cam's, if you've got good light then the colours filmed look natural.  I bought the £16.99 versions that came with a 4Gb micro sd card, as it worked out a £2 saving from buying a card separately but the downside to having a cheap card is that skipped frames are introduces giving a jerky effect if you footage has alot of movement.  Users recommend getting a least a 'class 4' micro sd card to avoid jerkyness.  Another minus mark of the camera is that videos are time stamped with no option to turn off.

I do like that you can connect it to your PC without the need to software - it comes up as a drive in the explorer.  Driver software is included if you want to use it as a web-cam.

Review from youtube - mine is slightly different, has buttons instead of switches, but has the same attachments

This video is what made me buy the camera

Canon Powershot - Low Battery Icon Fix

Recently on my Canon A590 IS Powershot I've had a very annoying problem where even though I'm using full charged batteries I was finding that my camera on a regular basis would flash the red low power icon on the display and would turn off.

Today it got so bad that I only got a couple of photos taken while up in the Lakes, back home checking on the net on causes of the symptoms it seems this is a common problem on alot of Canon models related to the battery contact on the case opening not getting enough contact with the batteries.

 My first attempt at fixing my camera was to bend the connector that goes to -'ve battery, this ended up making it worst as it would only turn on and stay on when the camera was upside down.  But it did prove that battery contact was the problem as the red low battery indicator stopped coming back in my tests when it was upside down and I could tap the camera and it would turn off.

To fix my problem I ended up having to pull the -'ve connector right out of it's slot, as shown below so it's in constant contact with the battery.

I showed my fix to my dad who has the same camera, below is how the battery sits in his camera.  From the picture you can see that the battery is 1-2mm higher than it is in my camera, so it looks like although I've apply a working fix to the contact on the case lid, the actual problem has occurred with the +'ve connector at the other end inside the case - it's lost it's spring feedback.

I'm leaving the fix as it is, will be over the top to take the camera apart to fix the source of the problem.

Update Sept 2011 - Thanks everyone for their comments, I really appreciate how useful you found this post, I've recorded a video (below) of how to do the fix.  You'll see the first few attempts didn't resolve the problem and rather that cut them out I thought I'd keep them in so it's clearer what finally needs to be done.

Birdbox - Video Capture

To improve how I capture what is going in the birdbox I bought the two items pictured below, each device allows 4 connections but the 4 are shared which means the more connections you add the low the frame rate captured from each connection, also special software is needed to make the most of these and the software I wanted to use only allows manual switching so I won't be able to record from all 4 at the same time.  I'll be using both devices to at least allow access to 2 feeds at full frame rate.

As these came from china the instructions on installing the correct drivers wasn't clear, the usb device I got working with not too much trouble but the pci card device took a few attempts plus some emails to the sellers in china to get it working.

Finally item bought for this year is a new power supple to connect the extra cameras

Birdbox - New Cameras

This year I've managed to get a couple ccd based camera's of ebay, ccd is slightly better than our cheaper cmos based cameras

One has be placed in a birdbox but as these cameras have no InfraRed we need to continue to use the old cmos camera in the box for the IR.  The second camera has been placed outside, this may need raising slightly to get a direct line of sight with the birdbox entrance