Making our Meadow Blog

Meadowcam Installed!

In spite of some slightly dodgy weather and the fact that Max had us up half the night, we decided to go for it and set the meadowcam up today while we have the chance. With help from Steen, Colin, Ali and Nicole and entertainment provided by Max, we got there about 11 and after settling on a new location near the pond Ali has just had dug, installing the post and setting up the camera only took about about an hour. I will go back in a week to check up on the progress, the settings etc and also to realign the solar panel with the optimum position.

Frogs!

Trimmed the vegetation back, not much happening, but while sorting
it out I counted 10 frogs and also spotted a female smooth newt. Obviously they
were all steering well clear of the camera, which is specializing in pond snail
action…

Pondcam and first frog of the year

Pondcam is up and
running, with the added delight of having lights for night time viewing. In
fact they tend t o give a better image than the one you get in the daytime and
at the moment it is all a bit rubbish. Since the cheap little cams we are using
only have manual focus (which you cannot change once the enclosure is sealed up
they effectively have a fixed distance. So I will need to do a little gardening,
and get in there with some scissors. I remember that last year I used a glass
tank to create a clear space between the cam and the subject, but since the focussed
distance is only 50mm from the camera this isn’t practical. Maybe I should
have another go with the glass tank as the camera on that side of the pond?
 
On the up side, whilst moving some of the weed out of the
way (to little effect it must be said) I disturbed a frog. It disappeared into
the depths but it is the first of the year. Spring is in the air…

The moss is gathering...

The weekend was the first opportunity I’ve had to
really have a look at the meadow in the back garden this year. One thing I have
noticed, and Nicole noticed it as well, was that there seems to be a lot more
moss than in previous years, to the extent that it is now threatening to
dominate the meadow. I’ll need to get down and try to identify the species
when I get a chance but there seem to be only 2 species – I’ll post
some pictures later on. In the mean time I’ll keep an eye on it - I assume
that as the growing season progresses the vascular plant species will dominate
the sward but if not I might need to intervene. Interestingly the wet area near
the pond, which I left longer over the winter to provide a refuge for insects
has remained moss free. Perhaps I cut the grass to short in autumn? The grass in
the neighbours’ lawns in scalped to within a millimeter of its life and now
the lawns are about 90% moss. It would be ironic, but bloody annoying, if after
all my hard work the meadow ended up indistinguishable from all the other crap
lawns in the neighbourhood. The main causes of moss in lawns are:
 
· Cutting the
grass too short – this may have been a problem last autumn but is not
generally on the meadow!
· Compaction –
the meadow is not generally walked on so this should not be a problem, although
it may have settled.
· Poor drainage
– the meadow sits on a bed of crushed concrete and limestone, so it
should be very free draining. Note that the wet meadow which has not suffered
is less well drained than the dry meadow (it is lined).
· Shading –
it is in an open, sunny position.
· Low
nutrients – this could be a cause.
 
So low nutrients and the cutting regime are the most likely
candidates, but these are standard requirements for meadow creation, and my
research so far has not thrown up moss as being a problem. In fact I have not
been able to find any mention of moss in grassland habitat creation. Maybe that
is because it isn’t a problem, maybe the authors of the books and
articles I am researching do not regard moss as being a problem (this is not a
bowling lawn) it does have many uses after all but as I suggest above, there is
no shortage of moss in these parts…

Settings update

While uploading additional scripts to solve bracketing
problem I discovered that it is now working. Not sure why it suddenly stopped
working but hey ho, I’m not going to complain.
 
Final thing to check is downloading the images. I have read
in the forums (actually I think it is fora, but let’s not get too bogged
down) that the S5IS is prone to problems when downloading images via usb. Since
the battery and card slot is covered by the tripod head mounting plate, removal
of which would obviously disturb the positioning of the camera I think this
might be a problem. One for this evening after the pub, who knows I might get
some help there.

 

I have to say the last few months trawling forums or fora or
whatever has been en eye opener. There are a huge number of very knowledgeable
and helpful people out there but there are also a seemingly vast number of amazingly
aggressive, argumentative and frankly downright rude people out there hiding
behind their profile pictures and wacky names and just being so unbelievably
rude it stuns me. Are these people like this in real life? Who knows, I think
if they were talking to people face to face they would calm down a bit. I
hasten to add that I have not been the recipient of this forum rage, everyone
has been quite charming, but I have seen some quite heated exchanges about very
trivial matters and tiny details. Let’s face it this is just a bit of fun.


 

Settings

Tinkering with settings last night to try to get them just
so for second trial pointed up the following issues
· The Manual
Focus setting is turned off when the power is removed and is not turned on
again when power is returned. Similarly the focus distance set under the MF
setting is not kept.
· The shutter
priority setting keeps the specified shutter speed when power is removed and
returned.
· For some
reason the exposure bracketing feature is not working, either when the
intervalometer is used or when the camera is used normally. There is no real
reason for this that I can see.
I will have to see if I can find a bracketing script such as
this one http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:_HDR_time_lapse .
The idea touted here looks like a great idea: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:_Make_ANY_Single-Shot_Intervalometer_into_an_HDR-Bracketing_Script
But I seem to recall that when the camera’s power is turned
off the camera will not start up in Self Timer mode when the power is returned,
so I think this will not work with the set up I have, but it is worth a go.

Trial timelapse 1

Download Movie.wmv

S5IS Problem Fixed

Well the problem seems to have been fixed for the price of a wooden skewer, which I already had. While trying to find a solution which meant not having to spend another hundred pounds on another camera which may, or may not, work, I had another look at the CHDK Forum. I was looking for a possible intervalometer script which can be programmed not to run at night, to enable the S5IS to be used instead of the faulty S3IS. I found one but as usual with these things the link seemed to be broken. But while noodling about i found this:

http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,2075.0.html

Which provides a genius use of a skewer to reduce battery consumption by tricking the camera into thinking it is connected to a tv. I must do this as well, but in the mean time it gave me the inspriation to come up with a simple, lo tech fix - and it seems to have worked. Hooray! Plus it means i have a larger capacity card, so the HDR option is also back on! I am testing it again to make sure, but it feels pretty solid and I have a lot of confidence, I will need to address some other problems caused by the new camera (position and access). But now at last i can get going... 

Latest problem

Got the results back from the first full trial run
yesterday. The banding issues with the S2IS which I had been having previously
are still occurring and are serious enough to affect the image quality. After
some research I have concluded that it is a fault with the CCD, which is one of
the joys of using Ebay. I have tried every conceivable combination of settings,
and it seems to affect all of them. I can either try to get a similar camera
(while avoiding the pitfall of the S5IS mistake) or rethink the whole thing and
try a different camera (which I would still need to buy) or use the S5IS and
have it on continuously, using the CDHK as the intervalometer rather than the
circuit and then editing the images to suit. This would possibly be cheaper (I’d
just need a new circuit, costing about £30.00) but the increased memory card
usage and work in both downloading the images and subsequently editing them is
not acceptable. The alternative is to use the S5IS but modify the script to only
work when light levels are correct. I have absolutely no idea how to do this,
or even if it is possible. For the moment I will keep my eyes open for a simple
replacement S2IS, but in the mean time I will try to investigate the possibility
of modifying the script.
 
On the plus side the hood is now secured (whoop de do) and
the pond cam is up and running again, so ample views of green murky water are available
online again. Hooray!

Replacement cam not working

The S5IS replacement camera has been running for a couple of
days so I checked it and found that it was not working. In common with many newer
cameras it seems it will not allow power to be turned off and then turned on
and carry on happily as before. After power is turned back on the on switch
must be manually turned. This means that the larger capacity card I was hoping
to use is not available. The result of this is that I will really need to use
the camera I already have, but not with the hdr option, to maximise the amount
of storage space or I will be having to check every few days. I guess the
lesson learnt is not to overreach…
 
Another approach which I could develop now I have this
camera is to write a script which incorporates a light detecting element…
I will check on the CHDK forum to see if that is a possibility.