Occupancy rates with nest box cams?

[dampflippers]

Please leave message here if you have ever installed a box with a nest box cam, whether successful or not.

Was the camera added to a box that had previously been occupied?
Was a new box and cam put up in the same postition as a nest box that had previously been occupied?
Was a new nest box and cam put up in a new place?

...And was the box occupied or not in the first year?
If it was unsuccessful first year, what did you do? Move it or wait?

The reason I ask is that I am putting up a homemade box with cheap secirity camera in as a first attempt. Because of the short length of the power supply cable, it will have to be on the back wall of our bungalow.
I could put it in the position of a previously occupied box next to the kitchen window. This would be the easiest option, but it wasn't occupied last year, probably because it was falling to bits and had wide cracks. It is also nearly directly above the tumble drier outlet, so I don't know how good a steaming is for nests. I have mended it, and birds have been investigating it. So I could put it here, but it's not a good position to drill through for the power supply.
I could also move it along about 6 feet, past the bathroom window to next to the computer room window. I know I would need to remove the other box (and check for nest building signs first), but I worry that it won't get inhabited.

Any help/suggestions/experience welcome.
ps it has only cost £30 inc little monitor plus my work making the box.

[IanF]

We use a home made box with a b&w board camera on the house wall 10' off the ground in between two windows and facing more or less ENE. No box was there prior to putting it up.

I put up the box around 2.00pm on the 6th April 2003 and that very evening Blue Tits came to check it out. On the 9th April they started building their nest!

It has been used two years in a row for nesting by Blue Tits and for three years by an over wintering Great Tit which means it gets cleaned out twice a year. Last year the Blue Tits checked it out in Spring but never used it for nest building. I think it was probably my mistake for using the stuff I did to clean it with. It must have cleared now as a Great Tit has been using it every night since last November.

[Dasser]

I installed my first wireless cam last year in a new box. This was backless so that I could fix it to my garage window and aim the cam through, blacking the rest of the window out to look like a wall. Crude but very effective, giving us pictures of 6 blue tit chicks on our front room tv.

This year I've gone all hight tech and - for around £110 - have fixed up an alternate colour/Infra-red sound camera linked to a video card in my pc. It also has motion detection software so I can leave it on all day while I'm at work. It looks so promising I've even set one up in the primary school where I teach and the kids are loving it!

As yet, we've had a roosting blue tit at school and nothing in mine - still a bit early yet though.

Das.