Birdbox camera stream

[FunkyNige]

SeeFive said:

Numbers seem to be dropping inside the box

On Friday there were six hungry beaks. Now there only seems to be three. Watching on Friday it seemed that there were larger and smaller chicks, and the parents seemed to be spending more time feeding the bigger ones. Maybe a little natural selection taking place. Still fascinating though, hope the little critters left make it ok.

Just 2 alive now Maybe it was the slightly colder and wetter weather in the past week that meant there just wasn't the food available.

[Nimby]

Did any make it? Hard to see what's left in the box. Once the chicks get to a certain size the adults can't seem to remove dead ones.

My surviving four look ready to go but the weather isn't great.

[FunkyNige]

One of the chicks was looking out of the box yesterday, I'm not sure if the other one made it but one was bigger than the other so hopefully the bigger one made it.
I think it's just a dead chick in the box now

[Some Gump]

Nige,
How easy / hard is it to set up the pi / noir combo?

We did a bird box last year, no interest. This year, pair of bluetits and at least 3 of the little ones fledged. Whole lot seem to have done the off now though - we see plenty blues on the TV aerial so I'm guessing it must be them (blues are territorial, I believe).

Next year I quite fancy setting up a nest cam for my son, but I'm not sure if Pi is too much of a stretch (I'm OK on a PC, but haven't dabbled in proper computer fiddling for about 10 years).

Any tips appreciated

[Nimby]

If you just want to see the nestbox yourself it's very easy. You just need a cheap composite-video camera (a few £ on eBay) and connect it to your TV.

As I couldn't work out how to connect that to my RPi and stream it, I'm using an old Windows laptop and the 21-day free trial of WebcamXP. That will do until they fledge - any day now - then I'll have 11 months to work on it.

Update - My four fledged early this morning.

Edited by Nimby on Thursday 2nd June 08:28

[FunkyNige]

Some Gump said:

Nige,
How easy / hard is it to set up the pi / noir combo?

I followed this guide
https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/infrared-bird...
It goes into quite a bit of depth about IR light, etc. but it really wasn't that hard in the end once you've got used to working with the pi. There's a link at the bottom of how to stream it, which again was a lot of copying and pasting really! I never could get it to turn on and stream without any involvement mind.

Couple of things we'll be improving for next year (with the camera at least, I think the blue tits got unlucky with the weather in terms of how many chicks fledged) -
1) HDMI adaptor for the cable - using the ribbon is a PITA, especially if you use a case where you have to attach the ribbon then put the case on.
2) extend the wires for the LED, like the ribbon cable, it could be a pain to connect it all up in situ, would be easier connecting to a small connector instead
3) mount the camera a bit higher so you can see the hole - it's quite a tall box anyway but the pi camera has a fairly wide field of view so need to be mounted as high as possible (and be focussed properly, we didn't this time)

Tips
1) we made a little camera mount out of a Nintendo DS game box, but something to protect the board sounds a good idea
2) make sure you have power and a half decent wifi signal where the box is

I'll add more when I think of more...

[Some Gump]

Thanks FN. Wifi might be a challenge - box is at the bottom of the garden. Good news is that I have 6-8 months to sort a plan =)

[Nimby]

This time last year ...

Nimby said:

... I can't work out how to connect my nestbox camera to my RPi and stream the results... :

Thanks to this link I have my RPi3 working with the composite camera. That explains how to get Motion to run with the latest Jessie / Pixel version of Raspbian, which also includes native drivers for the Easycap composite-to-USB converter.

A blue tit has been roosting in the box all winter, and the pair started bringing in nesting material in earnest two days ago.

http://propolis.plus.com