After a couple of weeks of fiddling about and testing I have finally managed to take the camera and battery back to the field and resinstall it today. I have made the following changes:
- added a new, sturdier wooden prop made from a skewer to hold the on button in the correct position, plus a number of spares stored in the small tupperware box, plus some spare elastic bands. I think that the main problem was caused by the original prop made from a cocktail stick being too weak and gradually slipping, causing the camera to turn off.
- added a printout of the programming instructions in the box. Not being able to reset the controller in the field was a problem! But it should not be a problem now.
- set up the interval at 20 mins, and the on time at 35 seconds, with no bracketing. This should prevent the problems caused by the memory card filling up.
- set up the camera to enable the images to be downloaded more easily.
When I was first setting up the camera (seversal years ago now!) I found that adding a USB cable would not enable the camera to take images. This is still the case, but having tested it throughly I now know that I can plug in the cable to download and delete the images on the card, without having to extract the camera and risk disturbing it. I have had to remove the rubber cover for the usb point.
The cable links up to the netbook (now a lot less undpredictable...) and I tested it twice today so I am confident it will work. I will try to check it more regularly just in case.
Comments