Wild Life Monitor

Introduction

The proposal is to do some sort of wild life monitor that will be projected into the Ham library for all to enjoy the pictures.

Purchase two of everything so that we can get a stable version "running in the field" and another version at little house for beta testing and development
Build the critter gram and install in bird feeding house. Test over some days till batteries run out and extract pictures.
Once the above is seen to work modify SD shield to a wifi shield. Have it connect to a rasberry pi (with wifi) connected to a screen.
Once the above works, set it in the library.
Solar power.
Next evolution: have the rasberry pi alternate between images of wildlife and bus countdown
Next evolution: have the rasberry pi microblog the images into the wide internet.

Photo bombs
- Give the library staff a quick access to delete current images
Battery runs out
- Have the critter cam send a message: battery critically low.
Rebooting
- After restart have a cron job of some sort so that it continues showing images.
Tech gets stolen.
- Install tracker, denounce to police, reinstall. Extra security measures will only make it ugly.

Arduino
- Camera shield
- SD shield
- Wifi shield
- Motion sensor
Rasberry Pi
- wifi dongle
- HDMI cable
other
- Batteries
- solar panel with battery charger
- tupperware
- hot gun and its glue.
WiFi-SD card
- Hacking transend card There might be another hack on openwrt: we can install our own router in the library.
- compare eye-fi card with transcend But comments talk about the various hacks available for transcend.

Following this tutorial
- All wired up. Arduino code works as long as we do not use wifi card.
- Wifi card has not been tested to be configured with linux but little chance of support. only mac and windows. on the brightside once configured there is no need to change it again.
- Problem with wifi card might have been that it was not formated and that the timestamping firmware and the wifiSD code is not yet included.
- Funny enough the SD card accepts recieving code just as any card. Might be that arduino cannot record card unless it has been fully formated. Found it with unformatted space at the begining and at the end.
- Some time ago camera worked with normal SD card. Now it can't be replicated. But where able to format wit an uploaded code.
- got it working again but movement seems to need to be very close to the objective to be able to take picture. Sensor is not long range.
Enclosure set and clamped down in box.
Power supply should be 12V battery. Tutorial recomends AA battery back (for several hours battery life) 9V does not have enough current. Plugged into laptop does not have enough current either: combination of laptop and 9V works. First version option is to just plug it in the wall'

inside the library there is a window next to the wild life monitor.the idea is to try the system out first by having the camera inside.
We are in one of the most dense populations of badgers.
There is a large array of critter hotels in the back of the library
The bird house is currently populated but will go away if we disturb them. So camera will need to be set far away.
cannot depend on power from within the house. So battery and solar panel.

since we need access to power and don not have a battery power not solar panel yet we opted for setting the camera inside the library to look out the window.