It's fairly simple. It's a 3Com HomeConnect camera with the telephoto lens, attached to a tripod in a window. The camera is plugged into an IBM Thinkpad 240, my old laptop, running Windows ME with Conquercam, a shareware app. Conquercam has motion detection, which created the challenge of keeping the feeder as steady as possible (hence the twine you see tied to it, which goes to a brick on the ground). Conquercam is set to save nine images and their thumbnails, then start over with the numbering. It saves them via wireless Ethernet to my server, which is running Samba on Linux to give it access to the web server's html directory.
Okay, maybe not so simple... but I already had all the pieces. The feeder still isn't as stable as I'd like -- when the birds push off, it swings for a couple of seconds, which can result in several empty frames. And in the afternoon, backlighting is a problem, though it's not too bad. The wireless driver seems like it might be causing Windows to lock up sometimes. I found it frozen a couple of times after it had been running for a day or so. I'm using an Intel wireless card, but I'll try another (I have three kinds) if it continues to cause problems. The house finches are there now. Nick > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of Rodent of Unusual Size > Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 8:44 AM > To: Brin-L > Subject: Re: Interested in birds? > > > Nick Arnett wrote: > > > > Thought I'd share this in case anyone here is interested in birds... > > I have a digital camera aimed at a birdfeeder in our back yard. > > Cool! How about a description of how you're doing it (hardware, > software, et cetera)? > > We hung up our feeder right before a big snowstorm in January, > and we've been getting house finches, purple finches, goldfinches, > juncos, wrens, nuthatches, cardinals, titmice, chickadees, bluebirds, > and red-bellied woodpeckers (!). Setting up a Webcam with a cheap > camera might be cool! > -- > #ken P-)} > > Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Golux.Com/coar/ > Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/ > > "Millennium hand and shrimp!"
