My Naturewatch Camera Setup

I came across a Youtube Video on a Raspberry Pi project to create a nature camera from household materials, a Pi and a camera module. The design is from My Nature Watch and full instructions on materials build and the software needed can be found there. It looked like a fun project to do and I had a spare battery pack and Pi Zero hanging around along with a plastic drinks bottle and a plastic tub, all I’d need was a camera module right?

Construction of the box was relatively straightforwards but lessons learned:

1. Superglue ain’t gonna stick the parts together
2. Household sealant ain’t gonna stick the parts together
3. Hot glue is the way to go!
4. The bottom of the cone should be higher than the bottom of the plastic tub else it won’t sit right (a bigger tub might be better!) and that’s why I now have a block of MDF at the bottom of mine, but also for stability :-)

Setup was a bit more tricky

With the ISO flashed to the memory card and booted up, and after forcing my android phone to connect to the wifi hotspot I got nothing, no web page at either the suggest naturewatch.local or the IP address: 192.168.50.10. Turns out that I had not got the camera module connected properly.

I ordered a cheap but well reviewed camera module compatible with the Pi Zero but it came with no instructions and the images on the amazon listing (for me at least) were not much help. After some trial and error (i.e. getting the ribbon cable in the right way!) the camera’s red status LED turned on. After a restart the web interface came to life and the camera image came through clear.

Usage and improvements

With the 5600mAh battery pack I have I get around 5 hours of up time before it needs a complete re-charge but that’s fine for my needs. Instead of the default hotspot I connected the Naturewatch to my wireless network so that I don’t have to mess around with the wifi settings on my phone to view the images or the live camera stream.

My aim was to spend as little as possible on this project but at the same time have something that works as intended. If I were to build it again I would go for:

1. a larger battery pack for longer running time
2. a larger tub to allow both more space for components but also to enable a bigger bottle top
3. a larger bottle top which will protect the camera better (spots of water from rain almost reach to the tub in the current configuration)
4. A camera that is better in low light to capture pictures of those creatures that creep around at night!

A couple of pictures taken by the camera: