Making our Meadow Blog

Cabinets on order from Eurobox should be delivered tomorrow.
I wanted to fit cable glands (nice term) to ensure a watertight seal for the cables. But the big lumpy plugs on the ends of the cables, the fact that the cables were not in a single sheath and the need for the steel shower hose mean i'll have to rely on them being just fixed in with a big blob of silicone sealant.

I also hoped to use the pressure balance equalising plugs (what another nice term...) which are very clever little gizmos which provide a waterproof seal while allowing air to escape to reduce condesation. However the lack of those glands means they won't work.

Capturing the image...not

Unfortunately haveing checked the Coolpix 995 at home it appears that Nikon Capture Camera Control 4.4 (the version i have) does not support Coolpix cameras. Shame.

However the usb cable does connect to the camera still and the images can be copied, so this may save a bit of time. Or is it just going to be more farting about than taking out a memory card and putting in another one? Hmmm probably not.

In terms of camera positioning a web cam mounted on the top of the lens be just as effective. Or...(very big duh!) i could use the monitor which i had earlier set up so that it would be facing towards the direction of the lens. That was one of the excellent things about those early Coolpix models, a really good design feature which strangely disappeared.

Great so that's one problem which i have solved, forgotten about, remembered, wasted half an evening and then remembered i had solved. Good to be on such top form...

Time for dinner i reckon.

Meadowcam(s) 2

Which leads me back to the other meadow, my mini meadow, currently looking rather lost and desolate, in a small sort of way. But meadow cam 2 is still on the cards, although it has been slightly sidelined by its big, long lasting brother.

This one will be a small camera mounted on a rail moving across the meadow taking shots at fixed intervals. The idea is to make a sort of 4 dimensional film. I want to capture the growth of the meadow and the changes that occur both temporally and spatially.

I think a simple arduino processor programmed to start the camera, move a set distance, take a picture turn the camer off and so on during sunlight hours only woudl do the trick. I am hoping to have the long term meadow cam  running by the new year. I don't really need to have mini meadow cam running until the spring. Probably spring 2011 at the rate my projects work.

First of all i need to make a small cheap trial version. Not sure if that is possible though.I can see some thinking is needed.

Meadowcam(s) update

Ok so still no progress on this one. The pc is finally working, but the camera i was hoping to use had to be returned to Colin (who is working on a mysterious new fog detector...apparently). But the main reason is that running a business, bringing up a baby and working an allotment have just got on top of me. That and the fact that the mini meadow has a big brother which is taking a lot of attention. My allotment neighbour, Ali, is restoring a proper, genuine meadow she has acquired. I have been taking some pictures there and using my latest toy (Trailcam, good fun!) and have been setting up a project to take a whole years worth of pictures and condense it into a timelapse film of the site. The main issue of course is power, it is in the middle of nowhere in the Fens. I have adapted an old Nikon Coolpix 995 (my first digital camera, bought many years ago and costing more then than a lot of much more impressive DSLR's nowadays) with the excellent and very reasonable assistance of Neil McNiven at REUK. It now has a light detector, a timer and a voltage regulator to run off a 12v battery. I have also got a 12v deep cycle battery and a 5 watt solar panel to top it up. I am just sorting out the enclosures for the camera and the battery (the battery weighs an impressive 8kg so i don't want it too high up the post) and i will then be ready to fix them on the 3m aluminum post i have borrowed from work. Then it will be a case of setting it up and letting it go.

Some of the problems i have encountered and thought of have included:

• rodents - they love cables, there is nothing they loke more than a bit of electrical cabel to ensure their early demise. My good friend Colin gave me 4m of steel shower hose (god knows what he does with all these things) and i'm going to protect the cables with this - take this you dastardly voles!
• theft - it hasn't cost that much, certainly incomparison with the Harbortronics version (https://www.harbortronics.com/Products/TimeLapsePackage/ $2500!) but i'd be pretty gutted if it got nicked. I'm working on some cunning camouflage...
• memory - the big problem i encountered soon after getting the modified camera back from Neil was the memory card limitation built into the camera -  Nikon state that the Coolpix max memory card size is 128Mb (it is pretty old). I checked and several people stated that 1Gb cards woudl be ok, and i had one spare. But when i tried it only the 16Mb card it came with worked. Had the modifications affected it in some way? Who knows. I even spent £30 on an IBM microdrive, which one wag said would definately work. It didn't and i can see why they never caught on! In a moment of desperation i tried a 2Gb Extreme III card - surely this wouldn't work? But it did, i have tested it successfully for several days.
• Enclosures - i have made plastic and dibond enclosures in the past and where the camera is used in my garden and they have been pretty successful. However, i can't keep an eye on this and i am concerned that it will just leak/short/self destruct in the month at a time that i can't check on it. So i am taking a leaf out of the guys at Harbortronics's book and using a grp enclosure with a lockable window - i have found a supplier and i am just finalising the details - to get sufficient depth i have had to get a fairly large container. Hopefully this will allow a future SLR model to be used.
• Settings - sadly when the camera was hacked to allows the timer to be fitted the manual settings were wiped out. This is a real shame and means i need to rely on autofocus auto exposure auto everything, a bit of a disaster in terms of a time lapse camera... With hindsight i really should have spent the money and got that MC-EU1 remote cord (http://cgi.ebay.ph/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300349386032), although there is no guarantee it would have worked. Better yet i should have bought a canon rather than a nikon all those years ago. Why do nikon have to be such bastards when it comes to cables - every one needs to be slightly different.Grrrr.
• Mounting - i am using a 75mm x 75mm x 3m post. I thought i could save myself a lot of hassle by using a spyra-base a cunning corkscrew-groundanchor which you screw into the ground and then fit your post into a socket. But the flanges of the socket are not welded together, they rely on the post being bolted in position. This is not a very strong solution and when i tested the post in it the flange sinply bent. So i will use a Metpost, which I know from experience will be strong enough - but  i will have to take a sledge hammer to get it in the ground! One the post is installed i will use standard sign makers channel to fit brackets to the post and make a shelf to keep the battery off the ground (and the voles). The camera box will be mounted higher up to get a better view of the meadow (although it is looking up a slope so height is not that important) although i may not want it right at the top to allow the cards to be easily changed etc.I want to mount the box on a tripod head (such as this: http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-Manfrotto-356-Wall-Mount-Camera-Support/p11043&cm_mmc=Pricegrabber-_-Tripods%20%26%20Monopods-_-Tripod%20Accessories-_-11043_Manfrotto%20356%20Wall%20Mount%20Camera%20Support) to allow it to be positioned well, but i'm not really sure how well this will work yet, it will depend on the final weight of the box plus camera. The one supplied by Harbortronics is a hefty 19lbs (that's 8.6kg to us in the modern world - says the man who can barely fit a plug ahem...) which is a lot more than your average tripod head can handle. And a tripod head will move over time, so i might not do this... Finally the solar panel will be mounted near the top on another bracket.  
• Accessibilty - one reason that the Harbortronics model is so heavy is that is uses a heavy steel pivot arm to allow access to the camera. I am thinking that i will be able to access the cf card slot easily enough (there's plenty of room!) but i am also hoping that i can use the voltage switch Neil has helpfully included to override the timer and then view the monitor directly on a netbook... it might work. But it probably won't.