{"id":1310,"date":"2023-04-13T13:01:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T13:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2023-04-17T16:34:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T16:34:45","slug":"about-beaks-live-the-hardware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/about-beaks-live-the-hardware\/","title":{"rendered":"About: beaks.live – the hardware"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the bird box that is shown at beaks.live<\/a>. It is on the side of a house in Cambourne, about 8 miles west of Cambridge, in the UK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Two cameras for \u00a321.66 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Cheap and nasty does it every time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the camera and LED housing mounted in the bird box:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Looking<\/a>
Looking upwards into the roof of the box<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The interface box with unused D\/A.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that’s the hardware. Total cost probably around \u00a375, including custom made PCBs, which were ridiculously cheap. I mean like stupidly cheap – around \u00a35 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming up next… The software<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,1],"tags":[128,130,129,110],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-raspberry-pi","category-uncategorized","tag-beaks","tag-bird-box","tag-birds","tag-raspberry-pi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}