[OT] Bird-box Cam Mark II

["Steve Morgan" <smorgo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Last autumn I built a bird box and put a black-and-white camera in it.

The camera's this one:

http://www.henrys.co.uk/cctv/308ir.htm

It's connected to an MV1000 and I use CamSurveillance to capture snapshots
of any movement. Then, I wrote some code to assemble the snapshots into a
kind of time-lapse video (it's not really time-lapse, because it's based on
movement, not time).

Anyway, over the last few weeks we've had a pair of Great Tits (I think)
building a nest in there and we're expecting the female to lay any time
soon.

Trouble is, quality isn't brilliant. The camera's not focussed properly
(even if it was to start, the birds are now 2" closer to the camera
because
they're sitting on the nest). Also, the MV1000 doesn't seem to handle the
interlacing very well, so the image is 'stripy'. The other problem with the
MV1000 is that it only manages to serve up an image every 3-5 seconds, so a
reasonable amount of movement is missed.

Here's an example picture:

http://www.smorgo.demon.co.uk/birdcam1.jpg

It's too late to do anything this year; I can't disturb the box as it is or
they'll likely abandon it. But next year, that's a different story.

So, I'm thinking about Mark II.

I want a camera (or maybe two, one horizontal and one vertical) that can be
re-focussed remotely. Colour would be nice, though 24 hour viewing is
essential, so black-and-white with infra-red illumination is essential when
the light level is too low (hmm, perhaps a colour camera horizontally and a
black-and-white one vertically?).

I also need some faster capture hardware. The only PC I have at the moment
to handle the job is a 350MHz PII. However, I keep looking at the likes of
the 2.4GHz Celery from Dell which costs next-to-nothing.

I've not yet found any CCTV cameras that can be remotely focussed (or
perhaps auto-focussed).

All suggestions gratefully received......

Steve






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