Next installment in the camera saga: as soon as my poor husband had cleared out the leaves blocking the camera, more got pushed that way, and we were back to an abstract light show. Plus, I checked out the angle at which you can watch Owlbert and Sofie in Tulsa, and I was jealous. So I found some amazing neighbors with a utility ladder AND tech experience, and would you just look at this new angle?
The spot of light in the top middle is the hole through which the camera
Just for posterity: the cleaning-out process from this weekend, at 8x speed.
Also for posterity, I found these two pictures I took last year when I tried to look down into the nest with my camera on a tripod. It didn’t work all that well, but they do illustrate the depth of the
nest-hole, and also what Henrietta sees when she sits and watches me.
I’ve spent a week learning way, way too much about IP cameras and software and router ports and CPU loads, but knock on wood I think I’ve got this all set up now. The camera is streaming to YouTube as long as my laptop is powered up, and to AngelCam even if it’s not. (AngelCam costs a small fortune per month to embed in a website, so it wasn’t going to work as a standalone.) And the router is letting things go where they need to go and no longer capriciously opening and closing ports. Again, many thanks to Jason for the setup tips!
Of course, as soon as I started working on the live feeds and embedding in this site, I learned that the hole isn’t abandoned even in the off-Owl-season.
The important news is, the OwlCam is in place! Well, it’s in *a* place. And it’s broadcasting! To my kitchen.
Baby steps!!!
We had an interesting day doing the install. Jason Williams (of Williams Audio Video & Security) and his son and able employee John had come out a week prior and put the cables in, and then Jason had crafted a really cool mount for the camera out of a piece of bike rack. But when he actually got up there and stuck his head (metaphorically) in the hole, we realized this nest is significantly deeper than we thought. And that meant that from either of the two most obvious camera mount locations we were getting shots of the outside of the hole and then a dark cavity, and nothing else.
Here, I did an amazing drawing to explain. You’re welcome.
In the first quadrant you see the tree, with a large entrance hole, and a smaller hole I think the chicks use to get out eventually. I had previously thought the floor of the nest was at the green line, but it’s more like the purple line.
