A Bird Thread

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dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

(one of) My quarantine projects has been setting up a raspberry pi-powered bird feeder cam. I've gotten it to the point where it's only taking empty pictures of the swinging feeder 50% of the time, and now I'm trying to get some machine learning going to reduce those false-positives.

I've captured some pretty good shots, and a bunch of goofy dudes

And a few action shots, but unfortunately these are usually just caught by the low-res preview images

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 21:40

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:42

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

H110Hawk posted:

Uh, got a parts list / code repo? This is something I want to do...

FAUXTON posted:

same, this looks loving awesome

I need to get some clean up done on the code first (I'll try to do that this weekend, been meaning to do it for a bit), but for parts:

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, 4GB is what I have and is all I can vouch for. If this is your first one it's probably best to get a starter kit. I started with this one since the case has an integrated mount for the basic camera (more on that later), but if you want to avoid Amazon the official site has links to sites, and they all have various kits. My local Best Buy sells them, too. What you don't need (unless you want) are any development kits for doing electronics work.

Raspberry Pi Camera Module there are two options:

Standard 8MP is what I started with, and is what fits into the case of the starter kit I linked. It's an alright camera, however it's focus is fixed to a distance that's too far away for how wide the lens is. There is a tool you can use to change the focus (and my starter kit might have come with one, I discovered that I had one from somewhere later on), but it's a bit fiddly. It's fine to test the waters, but if you want to stick with it you'll want to upgrade real quick to...
High-Quality 12MP is what I use. 50% more pixels, bigger pixels, and swappable lenses. My workhorse is the 16mm telephoto (85mm equivalent on a 35mm), which both of my pictures were taken with. There are a bunch of different sizes, but be wary. I got a 35mm and 50mm which should have been nice, but for some reason they seem to mess up the white balance always leave a red tint.

The final form of this is probably using the standard camera to monitor the feeder, and then have a Real Camera set up separately that the raspi can trigger, but I don't know how feasible that is. One of my big persistent problems is setting focus since there's no auto-focus for any of the raspi cameras.

Storage The usual raspi setup is to have the OS on a bootable SD card, and it's good practice not to be constantly writing to it. So I got a really tiny flash drive that all of the pictures get saved to.

Power If you get a kit it will probably come with a wall brick that plugs into the USB-C port, but I just use a big battery. You just need to make sure it puts out enough juice, I've noticed that it sometimes has voltage issues with a smaller battery I have.

Mounting The case in my starter kit has an integrated 1/4-20 tripod mount. The HQ camera does not have a case mount, but it also has an integrated tripod mount. BUT I paid someone to 3D print this snazzy case for me, which connects the board and the HQ camera together. I haven't tackled weather-proofing yet, but I think that HQ case could be modified for that. I stick mine to a gopro clamp mount I have, and clamp it to my deck railing

# ¿ Mar 12, 2021 15:37

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

H110Hawk posted:

Neat, thanks for the list. Unless your code has credentials in it: No one is going to judge your weekend project for not passing a linter.

How far from the lens is your subject? Eyeballing it I'm around 6-10' from the porch to mine. How long does your battery last?

This seems like the ideal setup for me because our feeders are in the front yard, so anything more expensive / fancy looking would likely get stolen.

Ooookay
birbcam for taking the pictures
birbserver for viewing the pictures from afar.

Mostly right now it's too much stuff hard-coded to my environment, plus some documentation. The camera still needs a fair amount of hand-holding, so you'll probably want to keep it in wifi range, or use the WLAN onboard the raspi

20k mah is more than enough for a day, and most of a second

I'd say the 16mm is pretty good between 2'-5', beyond that you probably want to step it up. Those longer lenses I mentioned are this 35mm and this 50mm, but it's hard for me to recommend them until I figure out the white balance problem; hopefully it just has to do with how the shot is framed, but I haven't yet sat down and really tried to figure it out. [EDIT] turns out it's a camera calibration issue, and requires compiling and replacing the Pi camera calibration, gently caress

This is the 6mm and the 16mm from appox 2-3' (the second is what I posted earlier, uncropped)

This is the 35mm and the 50mm from approx 8', and you can see the tint. I need to try them out on a good sunny day

Thrasher butt came from the 16mm from ~18". The best angle I have, but it's hard to get the front and the sides in focus

dupersaurus fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Mar 12, 2021

# ¿ Mar 12, 2021 16:30

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:

Next you have to incorporate photo ID (is Merlin OA?) to automatically log every visitor to your feeder.

That's the current project!

For anyone that wants to try it out, this weekend I cleaned the app up and posted a README to the repo: https://github.com/jdpdev/birbcam/

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 22:07

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

I've got a new beta version of my feeder cam up, which adds machine learning to do species identification.

It's pretty good...

...but also makes some :discourse:

mistakes

that's not a great blue heron

Bonus pre-identification pic. Poor buddy was too heavy and triggered the squirrel lock. When this thing works it's really good

dupersaurus fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 16, 2021

# ¿ Apr 16, 2021 01:35

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

No pictures but I�ve seen a bunch of black-billed magpies for the first time this weekend and I�m now a fan

# ¿ Jun 6, 2021 02:56

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

Finally got around to getting a proper hummingbird feeder and stuck birbcam on it

# ¿ Jul 6, 2021 16:56

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

I think nuthatches are my favorite feeder birds because they just don't give a gently caress

# ¿ Jul 20, 2021 23:36

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

I�m renting a supertelephoto lens for the weekend to test something, and it turned into a beautiful day to photo some birds

# ¿ Mar 5, 2022 23:33

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

I rented a lens this weekend to test it out before buying, and of course I had to test it on some birbs

# ¿ May 1, 2022 23:10

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

H110Hawk posted:

Nice birbs, what did you rent?

The Nikon 18-300 f3.5-5.6. Worked great in the sun, but it's f5 at 50mm so I might pass on it

# ¿ May 4, 2022 14:34

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

H110Hawk posted:

For birding we are really happy with the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S VR one. I don't know if there is a more current model or what, bought them in June 2012 after renting them too many times. I have rarely wanted it shorter, and only occasionally wanted it longer. In the latter cases it was more "the grass is greener" though because I didn't want the weight.

I'm using it on a crop sensor body too so more like 100-450. I forget the actual crop factor though to run the math.

Yeah I was looking at that guy, but my first priority is replacing a broken 17-50 and I've already got a (kinda lovely) 70-300

Unless I go and get a mirrorless :can:

# ¿ May 4, 2022 17:38

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

The other weekend I rented some long lenses to try out, and what else was I going to use them on??? My hand-shooting is pretty garbage, but I ran out and got an actually-good tripod and :discourse:

I did this planning to get me a good long lens, but instead I came out thinking it might be time to upgrade the camera... thinking D500 or maybe even jumping to mirrorless with an EOS R7.

Pine Warbler

Blue Jay

Eastern Bluebirds

Mourning Dove

Purple Finches

Great Blue Heron

Great Northern Assholes

Carolina Wren

Brown-Headed Nuthatch

# ¿ Mar 16, 2023 15:09

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

VacaGrande posted:

I'm sure there are others... I'm a bird-interested American living here and it broke my brain for a while.

American robins vs European robins

# ¿ Jun 7, 2023 02:38

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

ianae but flipping through Merlin that might be a juvenile red tail. It looks like red-shoulders are rare in your area, and that guy looks kinda big

# ¿ Jun 13, 2023 14:47

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 02:42

dupersaurus: Aug 1, 2012; Futurism was an art movement where dudes were all 'CARS ARE COOL AND THE PAST IS FOR CHUMPS. LET'S DRAW SOME CARS.'

The hummingbirds finally found my feeder so I stuck my GoPro on it and surprisingly they weren�t bothered by it. It�s been a hoot watching them.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2023 00:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > The Great Outdoors > A Bird Thread