Techie Stuff
 

I have had a few people ask me to explain how I setup the cameras and website. So I will try and outline the basics.

Firstly you will need the following items of kit:

Cameras - Daytime or infrared.
DVR card - Video Capture Card (multiple cameras)
USB Capture Device (single camera)
Cables - Combined video, audio (if required) and power.
Power supplies for cameras (these are normally supplied with the camera)
PC or Laptop
Software – Icatcher
And of course a subject to watch.

I started off by deciding to make a bird table cam. I popped down to the local DIY store and purchased a bird table. This was on a low stand so I decide to elevate it a bit higher so the birds could at least see any cats coming. I decided to use a bullet cam and had to find a way to fix the cam to the bird table giving a good view of the table and the hanging feeder behind it.
I decided to extend a length of timber from the base of the bird table and mount an angle bracket onto that.
I then bent the top of the bracket over until the desired camera height was reached and  then mounted the camera to it.

    

Bird Table
      Bird Cam      
               
                           

The type of camera used dictates the type of cable required. Either way a wireless camera still needs a power supply cable and a wired camera will require a power supply, video and if required audio cable.
These cables can be purchased as one combined cable.

I have used two Infra-Red wireless cams for the night time viewing and some better quality bullet cams for the daytime viewing. The Hog box has a small high quality Infra-Red cam, the type that’s normally used for nest box cams.

IR CamBullet CamBox Cam
  
 
     
Infra Red Camera
 
Bullet Camera
   
Box Camera
   
       

The bullet cams did not come with sun hoods so I made do by covering the cams in some plastic tube and extending it just in front of the lense.
This protects the cam from being weathered and also stops sun glare.
Cover      
    Covered Cam                
                                                         

You will need a way of capturing the video from the cams and transferring it via your PC / Laptop to your website.
If you want to have multiple cams you will need to use a DVR Video capture card. These usually have 4 inputs.
For a single camera you can use a USB video capture device.
      USB Capture
  Capture Card  
     
                                         

Due to the fact that the cams on this site run night and day I opted to buy a standalone PC. This is purely the PC box i.e. no monitor, keyboard, mouse ect..
All that’s connected to it is the power cable and a network cable.
I then use remote desktop to access the box itself.

     
                                         
Capture PC  
         

But for most your everyday PC will do the trick.

Next you will need some software to capture the video and send it to your website.
There is plenty of software out there that will do the trick but I chose Icatcher
because it is very flexible. You can push an image to a webpage, enable people to bring up the console where they have more control. From the console the user can access all live feeds by the click of a link. Watch 1, 4 or all of the feeds at once. They can also access an archive of all of the selectable feeds. I tend to keep this to the past 7 days otherwise your hard drive will fill up pretty quickly.

There are a few versions of iCatcher. There is iCatcher Console which allows the capture of multiple cams and amongst others iCatcher Wildlife which allows the capture of one cam at a time.
iCatcher Console Windows Media Encoder  
                           
          iCatcher Console   Windows Media Encoder  
             
 

You can also use Windows Media Encoder (free download from Microsoft) or the free encoder from camstreams to stream the video from one of the cams to camstreams.com. They rebroadcast the stream so that up to 15 viewers can watch at any one time.

Well that’s a basic overview of the setup here, of course it’s ever changing but this should give you an idea of how to get started.