Raspberry Pi trail cam

[Tim Hall]

I'm thinking of getting a new! shiny! Raspberry Pi to run my media server thingy, so will have an old (like really old) Raspberry Pi B with 512MB RAM as part of a trail cam in my garden.

Reading up about it on various forum, it should work (their backward compatibility is Quite Good) with a current camera module of some kind. Cobble that together with a USB battery pack into a repurposed plastic food container and away we go.

Ideally I'd like a wireless connection, mainly for configuration tweaking and possible file down load. The garden isn't huge and I've found in my box of compu-tqt a Pi Hut USB 802.11n dongle. What's the likely useful range of such a dongle, or does "it depend"?

Finally, has anyone else here built anything similar?

[Kim]

IME, unless you're actually in the middle of a field, WiFi range is entirely a matter of "suck it and see".  (Which you can of course experiment with before investing in a camera and whatever.)  There may be some scope for Pringles cantenna tactics if the signal is marginal.

[Tim Hall]

Good shout about testing before getting the camera.

If I go down the Pringles cantenna route, does that go on the remote (out in the garden) end or on the router? 

[Kim]

Good shout about testing before getting the camera.

If I go down the Pringles cantenna route, does that go on the remote (out in the garden) end or on the router?

It was only a semi-serious suggestion, but ostensibly either.

Obviously putting a directional aerial on the router will reduce the signal strength off-axis, which might be a bit of an own goal if it's being used for other things

The further thoughts occur that:

a) This is the sort of thing that power-over-ethernet is good at.  But that means wires.  And if you're going to that sort of effort, you could get an off-the-shelf CCTV camera.

b) Does it even need a netjbex connection?  Could it store footage locally, given that you'll be battery-swapping.

[jiberjaber]

Most trail cameras use wifi for config and setup only, initiated through BT to then turn on Wifi and provide a portal for framing and config / formatting etc.

You might want to consider detection and also IR illumination plus some simple environmental control (dew heater mostly for the lens).

There some simple vfl tools which provide a compressed stream of video I have used successfully before for focusing lens on RPi for all sky cameras.

I've toyed with using LD2410 mm wave detectors - I have a few deployed around the house as presence detectors working well and they can be gated by range etc.

ETA: This was the tool I used https://www.linux-projects.org/uv4l/

[lissotriton]

Some useful instructions here, including software. https://mynaturewatch.net/

A network connection would be useful for setting it up, and making sure the camera is pointing in the right direction. But could do that with a phone or tablet, while out in the garden close to the camera.

Also could use a USB webcam plugged into the Pi, maybe gives you more options than the camera module.

[Afasoas]

Reminds me... I procurred a PoE camera to go on an as yet, not manufactured/constructed bird table. This is in an IP rated enclosure. Not only that, but it has IR emitters to in theory capture night visitors too.
I was going to configure it with the NVR that was already running the CCTV cameras on the front of the house - I had Shinobi running as the NVR and that could handle motion detection etc..
Sadly, the hypervisor running the NVR has not been switched on since energy prices more than doubled - but I imagine a half decent Pi could handle a feed from a single CCTV camera.

The only thing I'd mention is that any type of CCTV that has any persistence is fairly IO intensive and I can't imagine that a micro-SD card in a RasbPi would stand up to it for that long. An external USB HDD or a network share backed by spinning disks would probably be the best place for storing the videos.

[Tim Hall]

Thanks for all the replies.

I live in a first floor flat, with the Upper Fifty Acres located off one corner (no windows looking directly onto my garden, only onto my neighbrours), so wires would be a bit tricky.  If I can get WiFi to work, all the better, but I don't think it's essential. 

Yes, I've seen the mynaturewatch one. I've also had a look at this one on Instructables, https://www.instructables.com/Simple-Raspberry-Pi-Camera-Trap-Made-From-a-Food-C/ which uses MotioneyeOS https://github.com/motioneye-project/motioneyeos/wiki. It seems (I think) that the latest Raspberry Pi OS also has sufficient camera support to use that. Image detection is a thing I'd like, so it turns the camera on when a $Creature walks into view.

I've seen IR LEDs for night time illumination - there's one camera module https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-night-vision-camera-ir-cut available with them bundled in, powered from the CSI connector. However I've seen discussion on the Pi forums that the 3.3V on the CSI isn't really meant , nor rated, for that.  IElsewhere people suggest running them separately from a 3.3V supply derived from the 5V USB battery I tend to use.