BIRD BOX CAMERA - TECHNICAL PAGE

Many of the bird box pictures are taken from a colour CCD camera looking in through the side of the birdbox as seen in the picture, left. Until 2003, virtually all pictures came from a monochrome camera mounted on the box lid together with an illuminator containing five high-power infra-red LEDs (shown below). This is still in use for night-time pictures.

A 5 watt fluorescent tube plus 12V inverter provided even illumination for when the colour camera was in use, though in 2007 this was replaced with a single high-power white LED.

From 2002, the footage was recorded directly by the computer using motion detection software; previously a video tape recorder was used with the images selected manually.

The video signal travels up to the computer along URM202 75 ohm cable (like TV aerial cable, but somewhat thinner); this ensures sharp images despite the long cable length.

From 2004, pictures & video were captured by the computer using a Belkin VideoBus II. This was subsequently replaced by a VideoBus USB 2.0, and in 2012 by a Startech SVID2USB23.

In 2009, some footage was obtained with an Abus Eytron miniature digital video recorder. More recently, much of the footage posted consists of videos taken with a standard camcorder.