Nest box camera

E39MSport

Awwww. My poor little moggy came home with a pellet in its rear leg before. Not nice.

Fishy1

Hi,
I just spotted this on the Aldi website. It's coming in next Thursday as part of their specials.

Did anyone buy one of these before? Any good?

Any thoughts from all you nestbox experts?

Ditch

Fishy1; Check out the " Nest Boxes " thread. Page two. Posts fifty five and fifty six

Ditch

NORTH1 wrote: »

My home made wine crate box, up over a year first visitors.

We also have a number of feral cats stalking this same area, is it wrong of me to want to wring their necks??

Brian

Brian; I Like ye boxes, mate! They're good and wide. What are they? Six inches or more wide? Could be deeper. But they didn't make them that way, eh?

Good initiative to make use of them as ye have. Anyone who makes the effort gets my vote


Oh and, feral cats? Yes, mate. I'm afraid, as a professional, I must point out that it is quite wrong to consider wringing ones neck. (Wags the big finger).

No. Ye should use a .22 Hornet feeding it 35 gr V Max Ballistic Tips. That sorts the bastards out. And they don't get to scratch the hell out of ye!

I also have some superb cage traps here. Only, then ye've got to be a bit more 'imaginative' about dispatching the vile things

Doge

Very interested in getting one of the aldi boxes.

It looks great value compared to a lot of online prices, and has a very generous 30m cable.

One thing that is not mentioned is a power supply for the camera.

I'm assuming the camera must be powered to provide a picture.

In the picture it looks like there may be a power supply to the left of the scart cable.

Im assuming the multicore cable has a DC socket at the end of it, as well as an rca socket?

Alun

If it's anything like the (much more expensive!) I recently bought, the cable has 2 RCA phono style connectors, one for video and one for audio, and one DC socket for the supplied AC-DC adapter.

Doge

Thanks for the reply man.
Has anyone had success with a nestbox facing anywhere other than North East?

I'm forced to have mine facing West North West unfortunately, but thats also facing the garden where all the birds have there breakfast lunch and dinner!

And its also out of the way of direct sunlight until sunset.

I'm pretty sure we have house sparrows nesting under the tiles on this side of the house also.

Another thing that will be important is the size of the hole of the aldi box.
Its probably more suited to Blue tits, I don't know the diameter yet btw, but thats nothing a little diy can't fix if needs be.

Ditch

waveform wrote: »

I'm pretty sure we have house sparrows nesting under the tiles on this side of the house also.

There's ye clue, mate. Birds don't read books. And, the only thing written in stone is ye epitaph

I've just been stood outside, north side of my cottage. Thinking about ye situation. Damn cold and dreary place. North side of a building. Worst winds come from the west here.

How about ye put the entrance hole on the side of the box. So it faces more sort of east / north east? Save that westerly howling in there and pushing any summer rains with it.

Doge

Thats a very cool way of empathizing there Ditch! Putting me into the shoes or lack of shoes of a bird!
Unfortunately thats the only side of the house i could it up without much protest.

Otherwise it would be on a boiler house, which would be about 2 metres high max.

I think i might wait til i have a better location to invest in one of these systems!

trebor28

i am posting this link cause some people might be interested in it.
it sounds like a good idea if you can put it into the bird house without disturbing the birds and you dont need to run a load of cables.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-420mah-rechargeable-motion-activated-2-0mp-cmos-camcorder-blue-41652

i cant vouch for the actual product but i have heard from people who have bought stuff from this site before and had no problems with delivery etc.

now some of the stuff is generic no brand stuff so the quality might not be great but it is quite cheap and mostly free shipping.

it might be a useful site to buy other stuff like usb cables and the like cheaply too.

Fishy1

Thanks for posting that link Trebor. As I'm utterly clueless about the technology end of things, could you explain how this would work?

Would the camcorder store the images it records (ie would I have to open up the nestbox & take out the camcorder each time I wanted to view the recordings?), or could I access them from my laptop? If so, what else would I need to be able to make this work?

Thanks in advance!

trebor28

Fishy,
its a tricky one alright. you would probably want some sort of slot in the side or top where you could put the camera in or take it out.

it has a battery in it and only works when the motion detector activates as video eats batteries.

it takes a micro sd card i think similar to one you might find in your camera or phone.

you could either take out your laptop and plug in the usb cable to download the data to your laptop or else take away the camera and recharge it and down load the data then.

Spud76

I've just bought an Aldi bird box kit for €39 which was advertised as allowing the user "to see nature in full colour" the packaging states a number of times that the kit will operate in full colour and even has colour pictures of a nest on the box. The kit only operates in Black & White, not a trace of colour and it is not even a clear B&W picture, the infra red lights are too bright so you get a bright white spot in the middle of the TV screen and a washed out image overall.

This would appear to be blatant false advertising on the part of Aldi, selling cheap kits/cameras as full colour cameras when they are clearly not. Be warned the "colour kit" will NOT give you colour images. The box is poorly designed without windows and the camera while technically colour (if used outside on a bright day) will only ever operate in B&W in the low light available inside a bird box.

I think its a case of if you really want the right product, in this case Colour Camera Bird Box Kit then you need to go to a dedicated supplier, Aldi are cheap and in this case you get a disappointing product that is not worth the money.

Has anyone else been generally disappointed by with these camera kits?

E39MSport

Make a window high up in the side of the box using plastic milk bottle type material and black out most of the infra red LEDs using marker.

That should help clear up the image and get some colour in.

Alun

I bought one online for considerably more than what you paid, and I must say the colour on mine is pretty washed out too, even though my nest box has a frosted glass window on the top to let natural light in. I think it's just a 'feature' of these small cameras that they don't give very good colour contrast.

swifts need our help!

For this reason all my cameras - 21 - are black and white

Mark

Rainbowsend

Spud76 wrote: »

Has anyone else been generally disappointed by with these camera kits?

I got one of these from Aldi when they had them in the Spring, paid
39.00 euro also, I must say the quality of the picture is very good, not
colour but that doesnt bother me, and I cant remember if it was sold as
colour or not. It does have opaque windows either side and you can
see it at night as well as it has infrared light in it. For the money it was
great, the box is a little on the small side and didnt have anything nesting
in it in the Spring but I didnt expect it in the first year. I have had a
little blue tit roosting in it for a couple of weeks, and he was hiding nuts
in there also, so I am hopeful that it will be used for nesting in the Spring.
There is sound also and it is a handy security cam as I can here what is
going on in the front garden (my bedroom is in the back) I have it hooked
up to the television in the bedroom, and yes it was lovely to hear the dawn
chorus from my bed...:)

kylith

AFAIK infra red cameras will never show colour. The camera may be colour in daylight but IR works on the invisible spectrum; so no colours.