My father, along with most of my uncles, are HUGE on hunting.
They've all used Trail Cameras before, but the results are usually haphazard at best.
What I want to TRY and build would be a wireless Trail Cam, either one that uses a cellular signal, or one that connects to a wireless LAN to deliver both captured images, and live video if possible.
I'm open to a lot of ideas, and I've seen some stuff online about it, but I have no clue where to start.
I've seen people use wireless IP cameras, custom built boards, etc. I would love to utilize something like a Raspberry Pi or other low cost board.
Cellular service won't be an issue, but a wireless LAN might be a stretch, still, it's something I wouldn't have a problem trying if it seems practical.
And ideas?
So like.... a motion detection camera that sends you a snapshot or video stream when it detects a critter? I think that's fairly doable with a Raspberry Pi.
What kind of range are you looking at? And what are you going to use on the receiving end?
autist woodworker Matthias Wandel has you covered; see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4PaGvAhV9I
Battery is going to be a problem. A pi will take to long to boot and miss whatever it is supposed to be recording. Running it all the time will require too large of a battery to run for days/weeks like a commercial trial camera.
>>915770
I calculate four days of running a Pi and camera at full whack out of a standard 35 Ah car battery.
800mA*5v = 4w; 35Ah*12v = 420 wh = 17.5 watt-days.
Power management could probably help: I don't imagine it would need 800mA when it's not doing anything. Conversion losses in the supply will hinder.
An 8w solar panel, in summer, will charge the battery more than it discharges, even at 100% load.
>>916105
See also http://raspi.tv/2014/how-much-less-power-does-the-raspberry-pi-b-use-than-the-old-model-b .
At 1.7w, that's a week of continuous shooting out of a car battery.
>>915748
this is fucking hilatious
>>916105
If you use the camera and RPi to do motion detection, you are going to have to deal with illumination. That will eat into your battery resources.
Most of the commercial critter cams use a PIR detector and put the camera and processor to sleep until the detector sees motion. PIRs are stupid and you will get a lot of false triggers (cloud shadows, wind moving branckes, etc.).
>>915748
building a trap the mouse can escape, still want it to fall in
>>915748
thats actually very cruel, he kills it by exhaustion
>>916421
No he doesn't, it excapes every time.
>>915732
>>915770
>>916105
>>916108
>>916382
I kind of forgot about this post because of how long it took to get some attention, lol.
Anyways, run time shouldn't be a problem, as I'm planning on hooking it up with a solar panel to charge the battery during the day.
The range is going to need to be pretty long, over some hilly terrain too. That's why I figured that some type of cellular connection would be best.
A local wireless connection still isn't out of the question. I would most likely have to use something in the 900mhz range though, and in doing that, I would most likely want to set up multiple cams instead of just one.
Any further insight on this?
>>917964
Though that may work for some, I'm looking for something a bit more flexible. Also, if I end up using a local wireless network as the backbone for the whole thing, an Android phone wouldn't be able to connect to a 900mhz wireless network.
