Motion activated recording hardware

[Bryce Comer]

Ok, so it looks like i am only going to get about 36 hours from the battery. Will definitely need some way of keeping it topped up. I've been trying to find a 12v input charger that will charge it, however, the only one i can find only charges up to a 10Ah battery. This battery is 13Ah. Hope to hear back from that company to see if there is another charger that will do it.
Bryce

[Mike Sims]

Hey Bryce. Have you considered adding another battery in parallel? Same voltage but double the amp-hours and, with the same load, double the run time.

[Bryce Comer]

Hi Mike,
Yes i have considered it, they are pretty expensive though, so i thought i would look at a way of keeping it charged with a solar panel. Hopefully i will hear back from the supplier where i bought the battery & charger in the first place & see what their suggestion is.
Worst case scenario, i will go with 2 batteries in parallel like you suggested.
Regards,
Bryce

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Bryce,
Good to know about your experiments. I am eagerly following it. Please keep us posted.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bryce Comer]

Well it looks like the best option will be to buy another 13Ah 8.4v battery since i have already headed down that path & run them in parallel. Turns out they don't have a charger to charge the battery from a 12v source, well at least not that will charge more than a 10Ah battery.
I could have simply gone with a 12v battery that could be charged from a solar panel then regulate the voltage down to the 8.4v that i need, but this set up would be waaay heavier than running 2x 13Ah NiMh batteries in parallel, at about 8 pound as apposed to roughly 20 pounds for a 26Ah SLA battery, plus the charger & solar panel.
My testing showed that i could expect to get roughly 36 hours from 1 battery, so using 2 batteries in parallel will get me the 2 days i was after.
Now i just need to set it all up in a waterproof box & test it out.
Bryce

[Derek Reich]

Does anyone have any experience using a Trailmaster TM700V with any of the new Sony camcorders utilizing the A/V port which replaced the LANC? I know there are adapter cables which provide a LANC from the A/V and they seem to work but only partially.... they'll turn the camera on, start recording, but then after about a minute the camera shuts off, and the TM resets. Has anyone had success getting this to work normally?

[Bryce Comer]

Just thought I would dig up this post again to inform those of you who may be interested in my recent trials with motion detection hardware & camera setups.

After using the Mumford time machine over the summer, I have decided to no longer persist with trying to make it work how I would like & just use it how it is for now. That is, in a way where I set it all up with the camera hooked up as a different camera angle when I am filming from a hide. The camera is powered on the whole time & as I have mentioned in previous posts, It will run no problem all day on the 13ah battery. The benefit of this is that as soon as the PIR sensor detects movement, the camera starts recording so with it set up close to where I expect the action to be, I can get some great wide angle shots at very close distances. Also, with it set up behind a tree & at about 90 degrees from where I am in the hide, I get a very different view of the action.

All this is great, but of course it is not what I was hoping to be able to do with a remotely triggered camera setup so my search has continued. Bryan Mumford has programmed another lanc chip for the time machine & it now delays the recording for 4 seconds, so I can now run the camera with the auto off function activated, meaning that once activity is sensed & the camera is turned on, there is a delay in the start up of the recording. After the recording has stopped, & there is no further activity sensed, the camera will turn itself off after 5 minutes. Unfortunately though, the auto power off function only works with the battery connected, & not power via the charger/wall plug inlet. This will still work well where there is not a lot of activity, as the large battery for the camera lasts more than 3 hours, so with it turning off itself, the battery life should be good for (i'm hoping) a week or two.

Recently, after more internet searching, I pulled the trigger on one of the "homebrew" kits. Here: Snapshot Sniper DIY Game Trail Deer Hunting Camera Components To Build Your Own Deer And Security Cameras The one I ordered was the bigfoot Controller board with the video program, & Sony lanc with light & servo cont. I'm no electrical engineer, nor have I any real experience with this type of thing so I was a little hesitant in ordering it due to having to potentially solder things together etc. Well I can say that it was way easier than I had expected, in fact, there were only 2 wires I needed to solder onto the board. You will also need the HPWA/Bigfoot Easy Alignment Mount & the 0.9 Focal length Wide Angle Fresnel Lens. All this comes to a total of 53 USD so not at all expensive.

Now for the good news. While I am still waiting on the Fresnel lens to be able to test out the setup properly, what I can say is that it works like a charm! I have tested it out using my Canon HF G10 camera, & when it senses activity, it turns the camera on & starts recording almost instantly! This was a huge shock to me, as I had actually asked for them to change the programming to delay the record command for 6 seconds, allowing the camera to boot up before it started recording. Well unfortunately Gary sent me the wrong one of two he had made up that day, & I got the one with no delay!! With the way it works though, I sure am glad he did send the wrong one! Interestingly, the camera seems to start recording from a power off state far quicker than I can do it either by turning the camera on then hitting the record button, or by having the lanc remote plugged in & waking the camera up via the "standby" button then hitting record.

After having so much success with the HF G10, I decided to try it out with my Canon XA20 & guess what, it works perfectly with that too!!!! Senses movement/heat, turns the camera on, records for 30,60,180 or 360 seconds, then turns the camera off again! Wow this was perfect! Ok, I was really having a win, so I decided to try hooking it up to my Canon XH A1, well wouldn't you know it, it works perfectly with that camera too! Funnily enough, with the lcd screen open, you can watch as the camera is awoken, & listen as the heads spin up all the time the little red record dot is flashing away on the screen, then once the heads have spun up to speed, the red light turns solid red & away it goes. Again, after the pre-set record time has elapsed, the camera is turned off. Brilliant.

Ok,sorry for such a long post, but I thought there were likely to be others out there that are still looking to find a solution to a remote camera with good quality video. This may be the answer??

Regards,
Bryce

[Gordon Hoffman]

Hi Bryce
I'm still looking, sounds interesting. Keep us updated how it works out.
Thanks.

Gordon

[Bryce Comer]

Will do Gordon,
I am very impressed, & looking now at a small cheap Sony camcorder to use with one. Will let you know how that goes.
Regards,
Bryce

[Bryce Comer]

Hi Derek,
How did you get on with the Sony cams? Were you able to sort anything out to get them to work correctly in the end? I did end up purchasing a small Sony Handycam to use with motion activated hardware however, the first camera I got while it worked perfectly with the adaptor cable you speak of, was way below the quality of footage I was hoping to see, worse in fact than the Bushnell trophy trail cameras I also use, but am hoping to "upgrade" from. I ended up sending that camera back & ordered a more expensive one with larger sensor etc, etc. Well after some testing of the footage, I will be sending it back too, as while the footage is better, it is still not what I would like with some pretty horrible artifacting in out of focus areas. The interesting thing though, is that it has the newer "multi" port for which I had to buy an extra adaptor cable for to go from that to the (now) older AV/R port, then from that I have an adaptor cable to get from the AV/R type connection to the 2.5mm socket to plug the Lanc cable into. Interestingly this all worked perfectly using my Canon Lanc remote, however, it simply won't play at all with the motion activated hardware i want to use it with. The camera keeps turning on then off roughly every 10 seconds while plugged into the board, & the board doesn't seem to boot up correctly.
All this leaves me to think that i will have to look again at getting some second hand Canon cameras with the lanc port so i can connect directly into the board with that.
If you or anyone else has any recommendations on cameras with a Lanc port please let me know.
Regards,
Bryce

[Bryce Comer]

Ok, just another update for anyone interested in this stuff.
I have built a camera up with the hardware I have talked about in previous posts & will be setting it up in the field in the coming days.
Today I also finished a second setup using a second hand Canon Vixia HF S20 camcorder. This works perfectly with the motion activated hardware, however, the camera itself has a much narrower field of view than the Canon HF G10 used in the original setup, so getting things right with the setup of that camera will be a little more critical. The HF S20 also has an electronic lens hood, that snaps open & closed when the camera is powered on & off. There is a motor noise that goes along with it & I think it actually sounds a little like a squirrel so i'm hoping that's what any animal thinks too if & when they hear it!
As soon as I have some footage to share from any of these cameras I will post it here.
One other thing I have done with each of the camera setups is to make them work in the day time only. I am looking at possibly making a couple of cameras with a white LED array, but I have concerns that any light source would simply scare off any critters that come by the cameras, & also give away the cameras position to people that may want to make it their own!
Regards,
Bryce

[Bryce Comer]

Another quick update on this project. I finished my second camera so thought I would add a couple of pics.

[Bryce Comer]

Ok, so another update on the motion activated camera's for anyone interested.
I have been trying to acquire more lanc capable camera's to build some more camera traps. It has looked like finding a bargain is proving harder than expected, so i've started looking into building a camera trap with a DSLR. I searched for a Canon T2i on Ebay for a few weeks, & finally managed to make a winning bid on one. I bought an SSII board from Snapshot sniper to trigger things & late last week went to work on trying to get it to all play nicely together. Well after many frustrating hours of head scratching, i finally got it all working. It did take having to reprogram the picaxe chip before things worked the way i wanted, which having never programmed anything other than a VCR, was a little intimidating, but eventually after watching many youtube tutorials, i managed to get it all right. I am yet to build a box to house it all in, but with spring just around the corner, will try to get it built in the next week or two.
I still have 2 more bigfoot boards with the Lanc connection so hope to eventually pick up another couple of cheap Lanc cameras & build those as well.
It has all been a very big learning curve, but i feel pretty confident in saying if anyone has any questions on how to put something like this together, i should be able to answer, & if not, should be able to point you in the right direction where you can find the answers you're after.
Regards,
Bryce

[Gordon Hoffman]

Hi Bryce
Interesting that I was wondering about using my GH1 for this and here you are. So I'm assuming you are shooting video with the T2i, so are you shooting for a set length of time and then it shuts off or can you have it keep recording as long as there is activity in front of the camera? The GH1 will run as long as there is card space and or battery power so I thought it could work well if a person could have it run for a set time or if there is activity it would stay running if you want.
Thanks.

Gordon.

[Bryce Comer]

Hi Gordon,
Yes the way i have it set up at the moment is for it to keep recording as long as there is motion. It will continue to record for 30 seconds after motion is not sensed, & if within that time motion is sensed again, it resets the timer & will continue to record. Once there has been no activity for 30 seconds, the recording will stop, then after another 30 seconds, the camera will turn off automatically. I am still working on what will work best, & will re-write the code to tweak things so it works better. You can also set it up to record for a set amount of time.
Is the GH1 able to be triggered remotely for the video? The T2i has a 2.5mm jack that the shutter cable release is plugged into, this is the connection i am using.
Regards,
Bryce