May 23, 2006

NestCam II: Bigger, Better and now with tastier Robins

• HTML gallery
  
• Interactive slideshow (flash)
  

However, I was just sitting down at my desk a few days ago when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye just outside of my window. On closer inspection, I realized it was a mother robin settling down into a nest built in the crook of a cedar we have in front of the house. It's about 15 feet from where I sit most of the day working on my computer and I simply have to lean back a bit to watch the avian festivities.

Of course, just using my own two eyes would be oh so ungeeky and selfish. :) Any logical person knows this calls for cameras and capture cards and video encoding and Internet streaming. Granted, I did all of that with the first NestCam (yawn... that was so last week). It's time to ratchet up the quality.

First off, this is not in the attic which means I'm closer to my more modern computers that have vastly more horsepower than the steam-powered clunker I used for NestCam I. Second, I remembered we had a high resolution, remotely controlled Sony Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) camera at work that was retired some years ago off a VTel video conferencing system. This camera allows me to pan around 180 degrees horizontally as well as some number of degrees up and down, zoom in and out and do it all from a distance that won't freak out the bird. The geek factor has just jumped a few notches...

Finally, it dawned on me that my Manfrotto 3398 Convertible Boom Stand that I use to hold a 36" softbox in my studio lighting would be ideal for positioning the camera at all kinds of interesting angles to get the best view of the nest.

After waddling around in the yard for an hour with the boom, stringing some cords out the window and positioning a light on a branch... NestCam II was born. I added the light later in the afternoon since the sunlight was creating high contrast shadows across the nest and causing the camera to iris down to compensate. This causes the shadowed areas to become entirely too dark. Therefore, the purpose of the light has less to do with illuminating the scene (since the daylight is plenty bright) than with making the illumination even enough that the camera calms down a bit.

I'll definitely tweak and adjust things over the coming days, but the current image is a top-down view very close to the nest where you can see the four pink and fuzzy mouths gaping at you almost constantly.

I'm sorry I didn't get it in place a day sooner. While setting up today, I saw the mother discard blue egg shells twice which was my first indication the hatching had already happened. I had my heart set on recording the hatching process, but I'll see if I can score that bit of fun when NestCam III presents itself someday. :)

In the meantime, I've prepared a quick gallery of stills showing the setup and will link in the first video to start our journey. I'll continue recording little videos throughout the process and share any interesting news as it happens.

• HTML gallery
  
• Interactive slideshow (flash)
  

This is the first recording from NestCam II. It shows the mother sitting on the nest, flying off for a bit (leaving the babies quite visible), then returning for the feeding and the ubiquitous "waste disposal". I'm providing it in two formats: QuickTime 640x480 H.264 (7.5 MB) and 320x240 MPEG4 (4 MB). People on slower connections will likely prefer the faster loading (albeit slightly lower quality) MPEG4 version.

Enjoy!
- Aaron