![](https://naich.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/DSCN0758-1.jpg)
This is the bird box that is shown at beaks.live. It is on the side of a house in Cambourne, about 8 miles west of Cambridge, in the UK.
When I put a camera in this bird box last year, I was not optimistic. Expecting to capture nothing more than the inside of an empty box, there didn’t seem much point in spending any significant sum of money on a camera. I decided to see how well I could get it working for how little money.
![](https://naich.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screenshot-from-2023-04-12-18-28-31.png)
Two cameras for £21.66 doesn’t scream quality, but they are able to manually focus down to a few cm. Being cheap and nasty also means they won’t have an infra-red filter on the lens, which means I can illuminate the box at night with a light the beaks can’t see.
I picked one and sawed off the mounting at the bottom, knocked up a 3d printed housing to fit it in the apex of the bird box roof, and fitted some cheap Ebay IR LEDs.
![A mess of wires being put into the 3d printed camera mount.](https://naich.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IMG20220903141611.jpg)
This is the camera and LED housing mounted in the bird box:
![Looking up into the box with the mounting fitted.](https://naich.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IMG20220904111125.jpg)
On the outside is the 3d printed box which holds the interface to the cable that goes into the house and the drivers for the LEDs. I actually had a proper PCB made with a D/A for the microphone but I never wired it up because I’m lazy. That’s why there is no sound. Sorry.
![](https://naich.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IMG20221218111338.jpg)
The LED controls and USB for the camera share a length of CAT-5 cable into the house, where they plug into the Raspberry Pi, which has an ethernet connection to the router.
And that’s the hardware. Total cost probably around £75, including custom made PCBs, which were ridiculously cheap. I mean like stupidly cheap – around £5 for 5 PCBs, including delivery from China. Anything clever is done in software, including stuff to improve the performance of the (frankly substandard) parts I used. Next year I’ll replace it with decent kit, including a camera that isn’t shit.
Coming up next… The software