Making our Meadow Blog

Woodcock

After a fairly uneventful morning a couple of days ago watching winter ducks I got home and pottered in the garden. About 3.15 a woodcock flew down 5 feet away and then bobbed about for 10 mins looking for worms completely oblivious. A really rare event: woodcocks are incredibly shy and don't generally appear in gardens.

HDR Time lapse cont...

Minvestigations into modifying the parameters to allow the intervalometer to make an HDR timelapse have so far been fruitless, the only method which seems to work is using the camera's inbuilt bracketing, but for some reason only for very small intervals. Having looked on the chdk forum i tried to use an alternative setup but this just caused the camera to crash. It also required the camera to be in continuous mode which it will not stay in when off. This should not be a problem when it is running properly since i will only set the number of shots to 1 and then have it set to autorun when the power is turned on by the timer. It does mean that i can't test it until i get the circuit back from Neil.

While i was doing what tests i could it became clear that the power consumption of the camera is greater than i thought - two evenings of tinkering have chomped through 8 AA batteries - this makes me nervous about whether the capacity of the battery i have will suffice and if i need to get a larger battery, will it still fit in the container. 

Thoughts on what to do

The snows have joined with general crapness to prevent us from going away. Just been having some extra thoughts about how to refine the process. One thing which I really would like to try is using the capacity of CHDK scripts to incorporate auto bracketing features which would mean that I can collect a number of images at each interval and superimpose them prior to the movie making process to get a much more realistic image.

There are a number of ways to achieve this. This page: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:_Make_ANY_Single-Shot_Intervalometer_into_an_HDR-Bracketing_Script

is very interesting, it makes it clear that just using the basic intervalometer script and some other settings in the CHDK menu enable a huge range of options including autobracketing. Unfortunately they all rely on the camera being set to Self Timer mode and when the camera is turned off and on again this mode is reset back to single mode again.

An alternative approach is to use the built in bracketing function. This is limited to 3 shots. It isn't ideal, 5 shots would give a greater tonal range. On the other hand of course they would need more memory. I estimate the number of days I would get out of a single 2Gb card which as far as i know is the largest memory card this camera will take.

 

Resolution/ no shots	640 x 480 VGA Basic	640 x 480 VGA Normal	640 x 480 VGA Fine	M2 1600 x 1200 Basic	M2 1600 x 1200 Normal	M2 1600 x 1200 Fine
3 shots	105	63	38	32	19	10
5 Shots	63	38	23	19	12	6

Only M Basic on a 3 shot system or VGA normal on a 5 shot system are in anyway viable, i was hoping to use M2 normal and prefereably with 5 shots. So i have the following options:

can a larger memory card be used? (must be SD not SDHC)his is now as old fashioned as the 128 Mb CF card I was looking for earlier on - they are all SDHC cards. I have found a 4Gb one at amazon, but they I am not sure it is not an SDHC card - will have to see when it turns up.
find an HDR script to enable 5 shots to be taken - there are several i just need to select the most appropriate. However it seems that the maximum size card i can find is  4Gb. This would mean that the ideal size would still need changing every 24 days if it is run on the 5 shot system.

I will trial the 3 shot system using the inbuilt camera bracketing 

RIP Meadowcam V1?

I had held out some hope that the Coolpix would still be
useable. While the new circuit for the Canon is being finished I thought I would
have a go at filming the snow melt (when it does). I have managed to acquire a
256Mb card which does write and would have lasted between 40 to 60 days on the current
setup. But strangely it would not write to the card when tested on the snow,
only relatively close subjects. It took too long to write to the card. I tried
changing the image size and resolution and then discovered that the camera now
does not save any of its settings when turned on and off. I tested it to see if
using a 128Mb card but this suffered from the same problem So I am limited to a
maximum of 314 images, which will make for a pretty short film! I may set it up
in the garden, where I can change the cards regularly. I assume that the auto focusing
it confused by the snow, although I did try using more complicated views and
the same problem occurred. Alternatively if I can get the processor to be
reprogrammed to enable it to stay open it might work elsewhere.

 

 

Fogging of lens and glass

One more thought, whenever I have checked on the cam over
the last week or so the outside of the box was fogged up and there was severe
condensation. Some sort of hydrophobic coating or gel would be useful to
prevent this. The only ones I have found so far is made by Oakley and is
designed for sunglasses and RAIN X for windscreens. The latter looks a lot
cheaper and more readily available so I will test that first.

 

Hummingbirds

Pondcam is back online again now, i need to move it around to find a better spot but i will never get hummingbirds. Unlike this fantastic site i found while buying my mum some rainforest for christmas:

http://www.wildlifefocus.org/webcam/

It seems to crash quite a lot which is reassusring... Even Sir David Attenborough's mates have problems. Maybe its all my friends having a look. But when it does work there is nothing better than hummingbirds.

Thanks Canon and CHDK

Unfortunately the voltage on the Coolpix circuit is regulated to 8.4v so this will not work with the new camera unless i can change the voltage regulator on the existing circuit easily. If so i could be up and running. I manageed to get a plug for the AC adapter at Maplins (they really are so helpful they opened up 10 packets to find the right one and smiled as they did it!) so now i just need to solder the plug on some wire and we are away. This is proof how uch better canon compacts are for this sort of thing than nikon cameras with their complicated and unnecessarily obstruse proprietary sockets.

However i checked on the coolpix yesterday and it had only taken 13 shots. When i checked on it this morning it had still only taken 13 shots. I had a quick look and a wire had come loose on the switch. I have brought it in to solder the connections.

Which means i need to learn how to solder.

I managed to solve the problem with the A560 with the helf of Microfunguy on the CHDK forum (so much great stuff here i usrge everyone to look) and now it will launch the intervalometer script. The downside is that it will only do so when the camera is turned on via the script of the battery being physically inserted. When the ac adapter is turned on and off to simulate the action of the light detector / timer circuit it needds to be turned on again using the on/off sitch on the camera. This means it is not suitable for this project but it is good to have another one available for future smaller scale projects.

The CHDK is such a great function, and is the other great reason for using canon for these projects. The number of possibilities is amazing!

Canon may save the day

After a very frustrating few days trying to bid for suitable Canon Point & Shoot Camera on Ebay i have finally managed to get one, and after an evening of of tinkering with CHDK (and quite a bit of swearing) i have got to the point that the S2IS i have will start an intervalometer script and happily click away until the power is removed (batteries taken out) and then when power restored it will start off again. Now i need to get an ac adapter with the appropriate sized plug and we are away. I think that the voltage (7.4V) is similar to the Coolpix 995 so it might not need another circuit - which would be great! I did get two cameras (i ended up losing on so many that i started bidding on several at once and wound up getting 2!) and the other one seemed not to work, but after posting a request on the forum i got some really great helpful advice. So i may be able to use this one (an A560) for the Meadowcam 2...

Trial Meadowcam up and running

After lots of hassle i have finally got the Meadowcam up in the back garden to test its waterproofing, stability etc. Pictures are shown here: http://meadowmaker.typepad.co.uk/photos/meadowcam/index.html.

It seems to be working ok. Although i am thinking of not using the Coolpix (but then again...) I am testing it with the coolpix in to see if this will work ok with the lowest size and resolution settings to see what effect this has.

This change of heart has been effected by the realisation that the alternative D70 camera would be probably not work after all - the setting for the remote shooting mode did  remain when I tested it every 10 mins for an hour, but if the camera were switched off for several hours and turned on it will revert to the single / continuous shot. I checked with Nikon whether it can be made the default shooting mode and they said no. So that is that option shot out of the water as well. I may be in the position of having a box and no camera again...

Post panel and box installed

I’ve sort of abandoned the Coolpix option now and I’m getting another circuit made using my D70 instead. But I have got the box, solar panel post and everything else up in the garden testing its stability, waterproofing etc. I’m quite pleased with that side of things and will post some pictures later. I was thinking I could use the Coolpix for the crazy garden 4 dimensional time warp thing. On the subject of which 
I saw Life on Monday and they did pretty much the same thing in an oak wood – it’s worth looking at their site: 
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p90d6#p005hh0y
 
It’s worth a look – scroll down to the bottom it’s chapter 11 Life on Location – Time Warp.
 
They obviously had to make it look really pretty (that’s the problem when you let graphic designers get involved it all has to look …nice) so they did a tracking shot to get a background, then built a full size model in a blue room with the growing plants indoors in controlled lighting  conditions and digitally projected the background on and built up the timelapse images as layers. It shows that it can be done, but the results if it is done completely in the field will be a bit crap. But more real surely! Anyway I want to have a go once I get this one up and running.
 
I’ve just realise that I might have a major problem with the D70 after all and it might not work anyway – I have tested it by turning it on and off at 10 min intervals and it retains the IR remote setting when turned on and off. The question is will it do this after a night of being turned off – I think the answer is probably not! I have emailed Nikon's reliably slow support site, but i think I will need to try it out before I continue. In which case it will be back to the coolpix and dashing back and forth to Ali's field twice a week for a year. Not sure my marriage will survive that. Hmph. I might need to actually buy another camera! Or use my prized D200, which i am really not happy about.