{"id":67,"date":"2020-02-07T17:31:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T16:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zoosnippets.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2021-03-10T22:25:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T21:25:03","slug":"diy-camera-system-for-animal-observation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoosnippets.com\/post\/diy-camera-system-for-animal-observation","title":{"rendered":"DIY Camera System For Animal Observation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Internet of Things (IoT) is making a huge step and is more and more easy to use for everyday cases. It has explosively grown where devices are connected and controlled by the internet. With the come of affordable (actually pretty cheap) mini-computers, like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, the power of computing and digital making has come into the hands of people all over the world. So logically, it is also very interesting for a zoo setting. I will talk in this article about the possibility to convert a Raspberry Pi to a standalone camera and how you can use it to make a network camera system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why observe animals using cameras?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The captive animals we take care of living in an enclosed space for 24\/7. As a caretaker, you don’t see the animal continuously, and therefore it is not always known what animals do the rest of the day. With cameras, you get an insight into the complete life of an animal. It can be useful to see what the behaviour and activity budget is of an animal, their food consumption, their sleeping behaviour, and much more. But one profound benefit of using cameras is as follow \u2014 the presence of a caretaker affect the behaviour of the animal. With other words, when we are observing the animal, we often influence the behaviour performed by the animal. However, you may think: how can I ever build a camera by myself without any programming knowledge or when I never touched a Raspberry Pi. Well, I can ensure you that it is much easier than it sounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Raspberry Pi and MotionEyeOS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For this project, we will use a Raspberry Pi for every camera we build. The new generation Raspberry Pi’s (3B(+) and 4) have pretty good specifications and calculation power (= processor and RAM). And when a camera is making video recording, this sure comes in handy. Next to that this computer board is still pretty cheap, with price starting from $35 \/ \u20ac40. As a software layer, we use MotionEyeOS designed to convert your Raspberry Pi in a (security) camera. MotionEyeOS is a free software operating system with an easy-to-use, web-based and mobile-friendly user interface to adjust camera settings. With MotionEyeOS, you can set motion detection, timelapse movies, watch live streams in any web browser and make the camera available to your local network. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Build A Raspberry Camera<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To build a Raspberry camera, we need some more hardware components. This is a list of the major things we need:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardware requirements:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n