• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Web Camera Hardware? (1 Viewer)

kharrisma

New member
Hi Folks!

My wife is the birdwatcher in the family (but not so good with computers, which is why I'M asking the question for her.)

She's recuperating from a near-fatal incident of pulmonary embolisms, and they're telling us it'll be years before she's back to where she was pre-incident. She'd really like to be able to watch her feeders on her laptop when she wants to 'check-in.'

I tried to set up an Astek Mole WiFi cam for her, but it's a long story, and in the end the video is awful... it's more of a security camera; it takes a frame every second or two, so there's no motion at all... it's all but useless for birdwatching.

Searches are not turning up anything useful... everybody wants to show me game cameras (the kind you strap to a tree then retrieve later); no luck finding a full-motion video camera that you can watch through a WiFi network, not necessarily through the web.

Does anyone here have a setup that does this, and would you be wiling to share what equipment you're using? We'd both appreciate it!
 
There are starting to be some cameras aimed at the wildlife market but the vast majority are aimed at the security market. There are certainly cameras that will do 30fps HD from less than $100. I did have a quick look but there are so many out there!

The manual for the Astak Mole says it will do 30fps video.
 
Hey Mono!

Turns out the Astek camera is about nine or ten years old (the date in the setup was 2011). All the directions are useless, as they point to pages that don't exist anymore, and they aren't responding to attempts at support. It was in unbroken shrink wrap, and looked brand new, which is why I bought it (from a large local 'used-goods' store). It might do full-motion, but I can't access the setup page, and setting it up directly through the router allows me to make changes, but it won't save them... so it's pretty much useless at this point. It supports two formats; the 'native' one gives the choppy 'frame-frame-frame' picture, and the other one uses Apple QuickTime, which is no longer supported by Apple as it is supposedly incorporated into Win10... yet it doesn't work either. Typical hardware mess... stuff either works right out of the chute, or it's a major struggle to get it to work.

All the search strings I've been using have turned up nothing but those game-cams that you have to retrieve and watch... no remote viewing. What kind of search terms ('keywords') were you using? I'm obviously not asking the right question in the search bar!
 
"HD wifi camera" is a good place to start. Add "outdoor" if it has to be weatherproof.
 
I am using a Reo Link and Dahu cameras. Dahu camera you can run a stream just from the camera or you can run it through a computer.

Here is a video showing details:
 
Good Morning!

At least it is here in North Carolina, the USA, on 31 March 2021 at 10:14 am.

I was browsing through threads this morning, and this caught my eye. I want to look into doing this myself someday. So, I'd like to hang/lurk here on the thread and see what I can learn. Hope that's okay?

Barney
 
Warning! This thread is more than 3 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top